Category: Music
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A Traditional Western with Puccini?
Our Opera Lovers Group met in the afternoon of 27 November 2025 for a performance of ‘La Fanciulla del West’, often translated as ‘The Girl of the Golden West’. Was this really a ‘Western’ story in the best Hollywood tradition? Yes, it was! The music is amongst the best that Puccini ever wrote for Opera…
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Desert Islands for Anna and Geoffrey
Our Desert Island Solitude continued for two of our members on Tuesday 25 November 2025. This time its was Anna and Geoffrey, but not necessarily on the same Desert Island! Anna spoke movingly about her arrival in the UK in 1968, and her early introduction to music when a baby grand piano was delivered into…
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Hearing the Music of a Time of War
Our Music Unlimited Group met on Tuesday 04 November 2025 to listen to Pete’s selection of the music that was being played during the years 1939-1945, a time that some of our audience remembered. We enjoyed listening to broadcast recordings featuring Glen Miller with the US Army Airforce Band, and some rarer recordings like It…
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More Sad Tales of Women from Puccini
Our Opera Lovers Group met on Thursday 25 September 2025 for a performance of Manon Lescaut by Giacomo Puccini. This was the famous Royal Opera House performance with Placido Domingo as des Grieux (a student), Forbes Robinson as Geronte di Ravoir (a tax collector), Kiri Te Kanawa as Manon Lescaut and Thomas Allen as Lescaut…
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More Desert Island Delights
On 26 August 2025 we had another pair of members deliver their choice of records if they were to be abandoned on a desert island. This time it was Mike and Herbie. We started with Mike who had had an interesting career in collecting records and collecting advertising jingles. Some of his contributions were particularly…
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Amazing Visit to an Amazing Museum
On Friday 01 August 2025 a group of 21 members of Kenton & District u3a made their way to The Musical Museum in Brentford, West London. This was a chance to look at their amazing selection of music making machines dating from the early 19th Century up to the present day. There is an amazing…
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Rosenkavalier Weaves Its Magic Again
Our Opera Lovers Group watched an outstanding performance of the Richard Strauss opera Rosenkavalier on Thursday 24 July 2025. This was an outstanding 2005 performance by the Bayerische Staatsoper under the baton of Carlos Kleiber, the famous Austrian conductor. The cast included Gwyneth Jones as the Feldmarschallin, Manfred Jungwirth as Baron Ochs, Brigitte Fassbänder as…
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The Pop Side of Pete Pleases Us All
Our Guide to popular music on Tuesday 22 July 2025 was Pete Meadows, who has a personal collection of more than 9,000 vinyl discs from which to select for his talks. Many of these were bought during his trips to the USA. In a programme that went from the early 1950s to the end of…
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More Personal Music Choices on Show
On Tuesday 24 June 2025 we had another session with two members playing their preferred music choices under the title of Desert Island Discs. There was a record attendance at this event with over 50 members present. The session had no desert island, and there were twelve pieces of music rather than eight for each…
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Musical Escapes to Desert Islands!
On Tuesday 22 April 2025, two members gave us their selection of music that they would hope to take with them if they were to find themselves alone on an island. Our u3a had developed its own rules on the selection of music and it met very much with the approval of the large number…