Kirjahaku

When even his friends refer to him as 'a balding, bug-eyed opportunist with the looks of a beach ball, the charisma of a glove-puppet and an ego the size of a Hercules supply plane,' the odds of Toby Young scoring - in any sense - appear to be slim. But then HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS, his memoir about failing to take Manhattan, becomes an international bestseller. Now Tinseltown beckons. After receiving a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity from a Hollywood producer, Toby sets his sights anew on a high-flying career, this time on the West Coast. But it doesn't take long for Toby's self-sabotaging instincts to reassert themselves. On the home front, though, things are looking up: Toby persuades his girlfriend to marry him and move to Los Angeles - but then she decides to abandon her promising legal career in order to become a full-time housewife . . . and mother.Toby's hapless attempts to pursue a glamorous showbiz career while buried in nappies will strike a chord with all modern fathers struggling to find the right work/life balance . . . and with their exasperated wives. Failure - and fatherhood - have never been funnier.

* An Englishman in New York - by a man who survived to tell the tale

Opera Remixed critically examines operatic hybridity and considers the opportunities and challenges of disrupting traditional paradigms of classical singing. Accounts of crossover forms like 'popera' and musical theatre explore alternative approaches to operatic vocality, examining how entrenched genre ideologies are challenged by creative agents, practices, and technologies at work near opera's borders. To illustrate these dynamics, the second half of the Element presents a case study of operatic arias reimagined for TikTok as one possible blueprint for how opera might embrace innovation and 'remix' itself for a contemporary audience. Opera Remixed concludes with a critique of the elitist traditions that hinder opera's capacity for renewal, arguing that the art form will only be able to embrace a truly inclusive future by relinquishing constraints of canonical purity.

Opera Remixed critically examines operatic hybridity and considers the opportunities and challenges of disrupting traditional paradigms of classical singing. Accounts of crossover forms like 'popera' and musical theatre explore alternative approaches to operatic vocality, examining how entrenched genre ideologies are challenged by creative agents, practices, and technologies at work near opera's borders. To illustrate these dynamics, the second half of the Element presents a case study of operatic arias reimagined for TikTok as one possible blueprint for how opera might embrace innovation and 'remix' itself for a contemporary audience. Opera Remixed concludes with a critique of the elitist traditions that hinder opera's capacity for renewal, arguing that the art form will only be able to embrace a truly inclusive future by relinquishing constraints of canonical purity.