Glyndebourne On the Big Screen(s) and Some New Tolkien Linguistic Goodies!!!

Its been a while...but I have been busy in the opera front. I write today about two exciting and very different initiatives of note:

Glyndebourne on Screen - this is an exciting new intuitive we have at Glyndebourne that is bringing some of our Glyndebourne opera productions to cinemas throughout the UK, United States, Europe and Japan. Now you can experience our current productions of Handel's Giulio Cesare (in a landmark production by the visionary opera director David McVicar), this summer's hit Hansel and Gretel and Rossini's Cenerentola in stunning high definition 5.1 stereo surround sound. The experience of seeing opera on a large screen o is a unique one - where else can you see a really tight close up on a singer as they are performing such a moving aria as Cleopatra's - Lascia ch'io pianga and Da Tempeste sung exquisitely by Glyndebourne's Cleopatra - the excellent Danielle De Niese.

And if you can't get to one of the close to 100 cinemas we are appearing at - you can also view excerpts from the operas on Telegraph TV iincluding the ability to embed these clips and email them to friends - a great way to get an opera party together to go to one of the Glyndebourne Screenings!!!! Here is an example of what you can experience:




On another completely different front - after the excitement of the publishing by the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship of Parma Eldalamberon 17 containing Tolkien's guide to all the "foreign" words in Lord of the Rings there has been a bit of a pause in Tolkien linguistic analysis for the summer. Now the autumn (when it grows dark and there is more time for reading ans study) heralds forth two excellent works for study - the first is the published version of Thorsten Renk's Pedin Edhellen Sindarin Course which has been available as a PDF for some time but can now be purchased as a book to save one from killing many trees by printing out the work. I am half way through and I find his development of an actual course on Sindarin very well constructed with careful consideration (shaded in grey) for areas that are asterix conjecture - it also incorporates findings made from PE 17 including a much more fleshed out version of Tolkien's concept of the verb "to be" and personal pronouns.

Over at E.L.F - they have posted on a new article on their online journal Tengwestie by Helios De Rosario Martinez called Early Ilkorin Phonology. This article analyzes the develop of one of Tolkien's "minor" languages which he developed in the early phase of the development of his mythology - starting with the Book of Lost Tales and into the period when he was at the University of Leeds. Ilkorin is the language of those elves who "never saw the light of Kor" and therefore represents Tolkien's thoughts on that language who lingered in Middle Earth and did not have their tongue mingled with the Valar and/or Elves on the West. In the article Martinez states that Ilkorin was most likley a series of languages that included the language of Doriath (the language of Thingol and Melian).

It is quite interesting to see how Tolkien potentially modeled the phonological and morphology of this language and the development of proto-Germanic including parallel vowel shifts in key stages of its development. Martinez also states in his conclusion that "Ilkorin was supposed to be the germ of the languages of Men and that it changed less than the other tongues of the Elves." This got me thinking about one of Tolkien's languages that I am most interested in - the first language of Man - Taliska - which according to what we know about the language was based on Tolkien's love of Gothic. I did query this to Lambengolmor - the Tolkien linguistic mail group -and was told by ELF editor Carl F. Hostetter that we should revisit this question when the information on Taliska is finally published - Carl indicated that he was working on editing this but that it was going slow (I volunteered to help) - so perhaps in the near future we can compare the language of Taliska with Ilkorin to see how much the Elves who stayed in Middle Earth in the first age had an impact on the development of the languages of Men - the languages we speak to this very day!!

The Tolkien books keep coming - and I am eagerly awaiting my order of The Proceedings from the 2005 Tolkien Society Conference in Birmingham which seems to be coming via Entish post!!!!