corollary

Listening to:

Mozart, Così fan tutte. This is an EMI “great recordings of the century” recording, with Karl Böhm conducting, and the cast including Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Christia Ludwig, Alfredo Kraus and Giuseppe Taddei. (I've only heard of Schwarzkopf before.) The recording was made in 1963. It features some divine singing, but I’m disappointed that the choruses are very recessed; it sounds as if the chorus (along with their own separate accompanying orchestra) are singing in a different room.

Just read:

Graham Greene, Stamboul train.

I think this is the first fiction of Greene’s that I’ve ever read, and I am very impressed. I know that he classed it as an “entertainment”, and that it is not as serious as novels like Brighton Rock, The power and the glory and The quiet American; but that doesn’t stop it from being a very exciting “thriller”. It’s dramatic, full of interesting characters and also very sad. I hadn’t expected a romance to play such a pivotal rôle in the story, but it works very well.

To read next:

An anthology of pieces from The New York Review of Books. I think I got this as some sort of freebie when I renewed my subscription or something like that.