Brontës on Horrible Histories and John Joubert's Jane Eyre Opera

SlipedDisk reveals great news. John Joubert's 1997 opera Jane Eyre (with libretto by Kenneth Birkin) will be premiered in Birmingham in October, albeit in a concert version. Even more, the performance will be recorded and it will be released next year:

A Charlotte Brontë opera that occupied twenty years of composer John Joubert’s life until its completion in 1997 is to receive its world premiere on 25 October 2016, at the Ruddock Performing Arts Centre in Birmingham.
Joubert will turn 90 next year. (...)
To mark the 200th annive Jane Eyre will receive its world premiere in a concert performance on 25 October 2016, at the Ruddock Performing Arts Centre in Birmingham. The SOMM label will be on hand to capture a live recording which is scheduled to be released in March 2017 to coincide with Joubert’s birthday.
rsary of Brontë’s birth in 2016, and in anticipation of British composer John Joubert’s 90th birthday in 2017, Kenneth Woods and the English Symphony Orchestra will premiere Joubert’s opera based on Brontë’s first and most popular novel.
Joubert’s Jane Eyre has been over two decades in the making, yet the seeds were sown as far back as 1969, when the composer penned his song-cycle Six Poems Of Emily Brontë. He became drawn into the world of the Brontë sisters and, perhaps inevitably, Jane Eyre. The result is a major operatic work with “a score of translucent beauty – Joubert’s undoubted magnum opus,” comments conductor Kenneth Woods. For the premiere, soprano Katherine Manley will portray the title character and baritone David Stout – who previously collaborated with Woods on a SOMM recording of Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen – will take on the role of Rochester. They will be joined by a full supporting cast. The librettist is Kenneth Birkin, a post-graduate student of Joubert’s at Birmingham University whose Ph.D. focused on the libretti of Strauss’s post-Hofmannsthal operas. (Norman Lebrecht)

More on Edition Peters and on the ESO blog.

CBBC's Horrible Histories Special  Episode: Staggering Storytellers was aired yesterday, July 11. It included the Brontës (even Branwell) in a funny sketch.

The episode wraps up with a few more trivia about Lord Alfred Tennyson, Charles Dickens, who apparently was the star of his era (semi-agoraphobic and fan-despising as it were), and the Brontë sisters, whose antagonist was Jane Austen in the publisher’s eyes. (Katerina Perdikaki on On the Box)

Harrogate Informer tells us of yet another floral homage to Charlotte Brontë:

The fifty year anniversary of the Harrogate International Festivals and some significant literary landmarks are being celebrated in a special flower bed in the town’s Valley Gardens.
Over eleven thousand plants have been used to create the flower bed, the centrepiece of which is a giant ‘50’ to mark the 50 years that Harrogate International Festivals have been bringing world class acts to the town.
The flower bed also depicts four open books, each featuring the initials of four literary giants who have special anniversaries this year: Charlotte Brontë (2016 is the 200th anniversary of her birth), Beatrix Potter (150 years), Roald Dahl (100 years) and William Shakespeare, who died 400 years ago. 

Newsweek presents the Prime Minister-in-waiting and Leader of the Conservative Party, Theresa May with a Brontë reference:

May also presents as the serious-minded and dutiful daughter of a modest English clergyman. This is a strong myth in British society, with its Brontë undertones. And in terms of image it is worth pointing out that this is a much more powerful and intricate myth than being a clergyman’s son. (John Gaffney)

The Guardian has an article about what we call solipsistic femininism and mentions Maggie Nelson's novel The Argonauts:

Her narrative is neither solipsistic nor a cold critique; yet it is both literary and feminist. “Reader, we married there,” she says a short way into the book, Jane Eyre’s words reconstituted to fit the comedy of rushing to marry in California before the midnight passing of Proposition 8. It is arrangements like these, frequent in Nelson’s work, that show the artistry in self-exposition, the role of curation in the task of mining one’s own life for feminist fodder. (Rafia Zakaria)

Washington Post reviews the novel Miss Jane by Brad Watson:

Dr. Thompson gives her books to read — Brontë, Flaubert — and continues explaining Jane’s biology to her. These moments of pure honesty ground the book in the reality of medical conditions that, a hundred years ago, changed lives permanently. (Aditi Sriram)

Washingtonian is concerned about how many sentences begin with an unnecessary 'and':

And reader, I married him.
*
You wouldn’t remember them in quite the same way if Abraham Lincoln, James Joyce, and Emily Brontë (!!) had actually put in the Ands at the start of those sentences (added by me). (Bill O'Sullivan)

AND... blunder habemus (in an article correcting style, it's frankly a bit embarrassing).

Sun Herald has a kids summer reading recommendation:

"Shrunken Treasures: Literary Classics, Short, Sweet, and Silly," written and illustrated by Scott Nash
Kiddos aren't quite ready for "The Odyssey," "Jane Eyre," or "Hamlet"? Enter "The Versizer," a new - and very scientific - invention that condenses those voluminous literary works into children's verse. Genius! Far from your typical CliffsNotes, these nine kid-friendly interpretations of the classics feature fun illustrations and lots of jokes.

Read more here: http://www.sunherald.com/living/article88837927.html#storylink=cpy

The Tribune (India) quotes the author Vani saying:

Vani, whose debut novel The Recession Groom is a rom-com set in the period of global credit crisis, believes that age has no bearing on writing. She substantiates her point by throwing in some internationally well-known names, “Some of the greatest writers of all times such as, Emily Brontë, who wrote Wuthering Heights, penned their best works in their 20’s.”

Her best and only work, we may add.

Esquire has an article about the doubtfully shaped St Petersburg's island in Dubai:

“Our honeymoon will shine our life long: its beams will only fade over your grave or mine.”
Although this quote from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is admittedly a bit morbid, we think she gets her point across quite well: Honeymoons are important. (Lucas Oakeley)

Trendencias (in Spanish) explores things that can be learnt from the Brontës:

1.- Se puede comprender la intensidad de la naturaleza humana viviendo en un páramo solitario o en un pueblo perdido en el monte.
Las tres, Anne, Charlotte y Emily fueron capaces de derribar las barreras del mundo en el que vivían y escribir historias extraordinarias, comprender una pasión que ellas mismas no habían experimentado y abrirse a un mundo totalmente diferente al suyo. No podemos menospreciar a las personas que llevan vidas mucho más sencillas porque eso no significa que su naturaleza no sea igual de curiosa, inquieta y compleja que la de las personas que tienen por costumbre viajar, relacionarse más, vivir en grandes urbes con acceso a muchos eventos culturales, etc.
2.- Para ser un gran escritor no hay que vivir una vida épica y llena de excéntricas experiencias.
Nada que ver con Ernest Hemingway o Jack London. Las tres hermanas Brontë llevaban una vida de lo más casera, encerradas en una pequeña casa repleta de trastos y en el campo. ¿Y cuál es el secreto para sin abandonar esa casa escribir Cumbres Borrascosas? Ser una gran observadora de la naturaleza humana, ser auténtica y fiel a sí misma. (Read more) (Rebeca Rus)

Also on Trendencias, a recommendation of Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair.

A Voz da Serra (Brazil) has an article on Scheherazade and women in literature:

Essas mulheres abriram a porta para que grandes escritoras como Jane Austen, George Elliot e Emily Brontë pudessem escrever sob suas próprias assinaturas. (Kelly Cristine) (Translation)

Filthy Casket Book Reviews and The Vince Review post about Jane Eyre; Eric Ruijssenaars continues exploring Villette and The Professor translations (now in Czechia and Slovakia) on the Brussels Brontë Blog.