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Opera

Loving Animals: Historical Reflections on Bestiality, Zoophilia and Post-Human Love

What is meant by ‘love’ between human and nonhuman animals? Why is sex with animals such a taboo? It is only in very recent years that some people have begun to undermine the absolute prohibition on zoosexuality. Are their arguments dangerous, perverted, or simply wrongheaded?

Darwin, Breeding and Barnacles

Following the Beagle voyage, Darwin settled down to a quiet married life, relying on correspondence to gather facts. He wrote thousands of letters as he gathered facts to support his still-secret theory.

Exporting Russia: Diaghilev’s Beginnings

In this lecture we follow his early years, when he published The World of Art, a provocative Russian journal, exhibited Russian visual art in Paris, and then brought Russian music there, culminating in his production of Musorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov.

Prokofiev's War and Peace

Sergei Prokofiev’s War and Peace (1953) was an adaptation of Tolstoy’s novel begun during WWII. He saw it as a personal interpretation of the novel.

Cruelty to Animals

This lecture starts by looking at early-modern understandings of the nature of ‘animal’ and ‘human’ life, before turning to the rise of ‘rights of animals’.

Musorgsky's Boris Godunov

Musorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov (1872) is set in the ‘Time of Troubles’, using Pushkin’s incisive verse tragedy on the chaotic period preceding the establishment of the Romanovs.

Glinka's A Life for the Tsar

The rousing finale of Mikhail Glinka's patriotic A Life for the Tsar (1836) guaranteed it a place as the traditional season opener in Russian opera houses.

The Age of Tyrants: Sappho via Gounod's Opera

This lecture uncovers what we know about the ‘real Sappho’, an aristocrat who lived between 630 and 570 BCE on the island of Lesbos and socialised in the lavish courts of upstart tyrants.

Cheats, Liars and Fornicators: The Hidden Face of Mother Nature

Professor Steve Jones will talk about the crafty ways of living creatures, from orchids to ourselves, and about how, beneath every beauty, lies a beast.

Bug World: Sex, Violence and a Cast of Billions

Insects are the most abundant and enduring multi-cellular life form ever to have evolved. As model organisms in research, insects have greatly helped our understanding of genetics, physiology and behaviour.