Let the dancing in the streets begin! Jonathan Miller, who has spent the last two decades multitasking between creating pretentiously dull opera productions and whingeing about the stupidity of opera and opera singers, has at long last decided to call it quits. Following a sure-to-be-listless staging of La Clemenza di Tito in April 2005, the self-described “angry and bitter” polymath will devote his remaining years to fabricating junk-metal sculpture. You’ll find more details (and more whingeing) in this article in The Guardian.

The perfect stocking-stuffer for the 2004 holiday season is a new CD on the Homophone label, “The Muse Surmounted.” The disc is a sampler of the art of “twelve women singers of a certain class, including Florence Foster Jenkins and her rivals,” according to producer Gregor Benko. He’s also the author of the Waldo Lydecker-style program notes, revealing oodles of scandalous and previously-unknown (by me, anyway) secrets of such beloved divas as Mari Lynn, Vassilka Petrova, Olive Middleton, plus an artiste new to me, Tryphosa Bates-Batcheller, who more than belongs in this august company. Enough already, you need this CD. Go to The Muse Surmounted Homepage and order your copy today!