HIGH NOTES

Imagine yourself in a second hand shop or flea market. Such a plethora of dust. Old items piled on top of each other. Some you are familiar with. Old books, myths, legends, anecdotes. A cabinet of baroque curiosities. Other shiny objects catch your eye but turn out to be glass and not precious gems. Then there are a few fading papers, manuscripts, postcards and drawings. Maybe a pile of old 75 records is in amongst the lot. A few boxes of memorabilia. 

But then, under all the dust, you find something interesting and genuinely precious. There is a jewel among the tat, a rose among the thorns, a story or an amazing fact from the history of opera, music or the vocal art….

This is our aim. To find and present something amazing or interesting that you may have half forgotten or indeed never known about a singer, a composer, an artist, or music itself. We trawl through the junk and find the jewels. In fact none of it is really junk, it all has a meaning for someone, but we are looking for those specific things that we think our subscribers and readers will enjoy.

HIGH NOTES presents these in bite size chunks. One discovery at a time, as it is unearthed. Each something to reflect upon as we rummage through the shop of marvels.

And why have we chosen the name HIGH NOTES? Today, the 24 July, is the birthday of Giuseppe di Stefano. In his reminiscences Rudolf Bing wrote, ‘The most spectacular single moment in my observation year (1952) had come when I heard his (di Stefano’s) diminuendo on the high C in “Salut! demeure” in Faust: I shall never as long as I live forget the beauty of that sound.’  And so may it be, that we bring to readers the forgotten that should not be forgotten, the shining high notes of the musical cornucopia.