1 & 2: Hugo, Verdi and the Hidden Faces of Rigoletto

Of the Forbidden Fruit, Free Love and the Curious Crime of Pearicide.

Part One: Gilda Misses a Month

Part Two: Mocking the Womb

3: Free Spirits & Material Girls

The Downfall of the Hero and the Manichean Foundations of Tragedy

including a reading of Boïto's Otello as a Bible of Hell

4: The Harp That Never - unwritten

Shaw's comment on Verdi's extreme theatre. It will make a good title for something or other.

5: The Serpent Skin

Verdi's Otello, inextricably bound up with Chapter Three

6: Schumann's Frauenliebe und Leben, a creative misunderstanding?

A note on Adelbert von Chamisso's shadowless world.

7: Tiles of Hoffmann

The Darkest of Light Operas
Or the hidden life of a manufactured object

Tales of the fantastic traditionally begin with the discovery of a curious object in a dusty old shop . . .