Jane Eyre playing with her Nintendo DS in Salt Lake City

We don't know yet what happened to lots 279 and 280 of yesterday's auction but a little bird tells us that Lot 278, sold for $68,500, will be going to the Brontë Parsonage.

On to other things now. The Standard-Examiner has an article on Gordon & Caird's Jane Eyre. The Musical which is currently on stage in Salt Lake City.

[...] Jim Dixon, now living in Salt Lake City, plays the brooding, mysterious Mr. Rochester, in the musical based on the 1847 Charlotte Brontë novel. Brittany Shamy, a Sandy native who moved to Ogden to study theater at Weber State University, plays the no-nonsense Jane, orphaned and ill-treated in life -- at least until she is hired as a nanny for Rochester's ward.
The show is double cast, so both actors share their roles with others.
"It's kind of a mystery, but also a big-time love story," said Shamy, 20, of the novel she first read in high school. "My favorite thing about Jane was she was sort of a feminist from back in the day, very set in her ways. She knows exactly what she wants, and she wants to be the kind of the woman who has her worth, and defines who she is."
Dixon calls Rochester the most complex character he has played.
"He's got a complicated past, full of sins and mistakes," said Dixon, 23. "I like just being able to see him react to Jane, this girl who has everything he wants in a woman ... He is just so totally enthralled that she is an intelligent woman who can handle life on her own."
[...]
"For me, the book was all about mystery, excitement and love, and that's what the music makes me feel," Shamy said. "I was so into every moment of the book, and the music brings it to life onstage."
Dixon agreed.
"The music is compelling and beautiful," he said. "It's a lovely piece. It has beautiful melodies for romantic scenes, and very strong dissonance when we get into the danger and mystery in the house."
Dixon said he hopes audiences will enjoy the whole package.
"What I hope people will take away is that people can change. Lives can change, through forgiveness," he said. "Forgiveness is a strong theme of this play. If you can forgive others and yourself, you can move and change your life for the better." (Nancy Van Valkenburg)

Jeanette Winterson has written for The Times an article about Massenet's opera Manon, which opens on Tuesday at the Royal Opera House, taking a look at the context in which the opera was written (based on the 1731 novel by the Abbé Prévost):

Dumas, incidentally, had various mistresses, was himself illegitimate, and was outspoken against the emancipation of women and the “vice” of prostitution. A year before La Dame, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre appeared in England, a very different portrait of women and sexual double standards.
But it was the glittering courtesan, the beautiful, soon-to-be-abandoned mistress, the fallen woman, the femme fatale, that continued to obsess and excite the male mind, and not woman as man’s equal in an unequal world of power relations and sexual hypocrisy.

One more on-stage bit of news: The Minneapolis Star Tribune mentions Wuthering Heights in a review of The Mystery of Irma Vep, starting today at the Jungle Theater in Minneapolis.

Dear Book Lover - a Wall Street Journal blog - wonders,

Abridging a book for multiple voices can also make mincemeat of the original text. But how could a recording of an abridged "Wuthering Heights" by Dame Judith Anderson, Claire Bloom, James Mason and George Rose be bad? (Cynthia Crossen)

It may not be necessarily bad, of course, but it's an adaptation - like watching a movie - not the real thing.

Another way of approaching a book - apart from the good ol' printed thing - is a Nintendo DS. Jane Eyre is apparently quite popular among Nintendo DS users, according to the Lafayette Journal & Courier:

And you can go online to rank titles. The top 10 books, ranked by "Books" readers, in order: "The Man in the Iron Mask," "Lorna Doone," "Lord Jim," "Jane Eyre," "Les Miserables," "The Scarlet Letter," "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," "The Man Who Was Thursday," "Othello" and "The Red Badge of Courage." (Doug Elfman)

Fitzrovia has an article on the London Festival of Architecture 2010 where 'Peter Whyatt pays tribute to one of Fitzrovia’s most stunning buildings'. The church in question - All Saints in Margaret Street - is described as follows:

“To describe a church as an orgasm is bound to offend someone; yet this building can only be understood in terms of compelling, overwhelming passion. Here is the force of Wuthering Heights translated into dusky red and black bricks, put down in a mundane street to rivet you, pluck you into the courtyard with its hard welcoming wings and quivering steeple.” — (Ian Nairn, British architectural critic and topographer.)

The Manila Bulletin, reviewing Stephenie Meyer's The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, brings up the subject of sequels and prequels and mentions Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea.

Les Brontë à Paris writes in French about Margaret Wooler and The Anne Brontë Blog discusses Anne's childhood and early relationships.

Laura's Reviews, who organised the All About the Brontës reading challenge, posts about Elizabeth Newark's Jane Eyre's Daughter and is giving away a copy of it (only among American and Canadian readers, though).

Categories: Anne Brontë, Brontë Society, Brontëana, Jane Eyre, Music, References, Theatre, Wuthering Heights