Two contrary and paramount composers
Robert Gibson
Two households. Two household names. Verdi and Wagner. To the north of the Alps, Haus Wahnfried, the Wagner compound in the otherwise unremarkable Bavarian town of Bayreuth. To the south of the Alps, Sant’Agata, the Verdi farmhouse outside Busseto, a marshy and little-visited corner of Emilia-Rom ... (read more)
Robert Gibson
Robert Gibson has lectured in music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, the University of Regensburg, and St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford. He has written for Opera Australia, State Opera of South Australia, Victorian Opera, Opera Queensland, Friends of the Barcelona Opera House (Gran Teatre del Liceu), Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, Wigmore Hall, Aldeburgh Festival, Snape Proms, ABC Classics, Australian Book Review, Limelight magazine, and many other organisations and publications. A graduate of the University of Oxford (DPhil), he is currently Publications Editor at the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra.
Claudia Gorbman, in her ground-breaking and much-admired book Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music (1987), invites us to imagine an alternative cinematic universe, one in which music has never played a part. Imagine if this were the norm, and imagine, after years of being accustomed to films in which music was absent altogether, attending a film such as the 1940s weepie Mildred Pierce and hearin ... (read more)