Alphabet associations - I

[Anna]

OK, this I think is reasonably easy:

B is a dreadful event on which an opera is loosely based and forms part of a famous film, a hopeful explorer who couldn’t have benefited from the products of another B (but we can), a famous Welsh swashbuckler and a 17th century comedy.

[Tapiola]

Gawain is one of my favoruite things in literature (it gets a reading every other New Year or so)... but I didn't twig the meeting connection

A great poem. Did you see the Simon Armitage programme a year or so ago on BBC4? I thought it was great.

Likely to be a hectic day today as I am holding the fort while others swan off on holiday... not sure how much I'll be online So the concept of a strawberry Fancy is much welcomed!

Moi aussi. A day of meetings which annoyingly coincides with my last day of work for a fortnight. These meetings usually involve a lot of mopping up afterwards...

[Anna]

Gawain is one of my favoruite things in literature (it gets a reading every other New Year or so)

Do you read it in the original or in translation, if the latter which one do you have?

[mercia]

not sure I have everybody here, but anyway

Bartholomew Roberts, Welsh pirate (1682 - 1722) known as Black Bart (though not the Black Bart of the American West), born at Little Newcastle. One of four pirate captains named in R L Stevenson's Treasure Island. (I could go on ....)
St Bartholomew's Day Massacre (1572, with up to 30,000 dead) featuring in Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots and D W Griffith's Intolerance
Bartholomew Diaz or Bartholomeu Dias, explorer, first to round Cape of Good Hope
not quite sure whose invention he could have benefitted from, possibly either George Bartholomew (concrete pavements!) or Harry Bartholomew (Bartlane cable picture transmission system), no, more likely William Hamond Batholomew, canal engineer (Aire and Calder navigation)
Bartholomew Fayre by Ben Jonson

now who have I missed out?

[Anna]

Well done mercia, brilliantly solved!! The product Bartholomew Diaz could have found useful would be a map by John Bartholomew & Son, cartographers (now known as CollinsBartholomew) I was going to throw in one half of a famous duo (Eric Bartholomew who became Eric Morecombe) as another clue. I think they based Pirates of the Caribbean on Roberts the Pirate and there is also a vocal score about him by Alun Hoddinott.

Now, let's C what you can come up with!

[mercia]

map by John Bartholomew & Son

of course

[Nick Armstrong]

Do you read it in the original or in translation, if the latter which one do you have?

I have the original and have battled with it... but for Winter holiday reading, I use a translation - I have the old Penguin version I used at school (can't remember who did it), Tolkein's version and Simon Armitage's new one. And yes his TV prog was ace, Taps

[mercia]

let's C what you can come up with

not a lot, as Mr Daniels might say

a C to connect

- an exponent of drone minimalism
- a triple opera premiered 1830
- a 1972 Fat Knight debut
- Bernie's appoggiatura novel

[mercia]

wo - for a minute I thought we had a rival game

Alphabetical List of Composers

[rubbernecker]

not a lot, as Mr Daniels might say

a C to connect

- an exponent of drone minimalism
- a triple opera premiered 1830
- a 1972 Fat Knight debut
- Bernie's appoggiatura novel

After a little thought (and a lot of googling):

Catherine

- Catherine Christer Hennix
- Les Trois Catherine by Adolphe Adam 1830
- Catherine Malfitano made her debut in Falstaff in Denver in 1972
- Catherine McKenna is the composer in Bernard McLaverty's novel Grace Notes

[mercia]

beautifully presented and timed so that I can abandon my computer for a while

D for "doing-my-head-in"

[Tapiola]

Fantastic work, rubbers...

I had made no inroads at all on this one.

early

[rubbernecker]

Which D (increasing in length) is:
- one who attained a Derby first;
- a character in a Chaucerian opera;
- a Roman-sounding renaissance lutenist?

[mercia]

increasing in length

Diomed won the inaugural Epsom Derby (1780)
Diomede, prince of Argos in Walton's Troilus & Cressida
Diomedes Cato, Italian composer & lutenist (though lived and worked in Poland)

neat question, liked that

[rubbernecker]

Diomed won the inaugural Epsom Derby (1780)
Diomede, prince of Argos in Walton's Troilus & Cressida
Diomedes Cato, Italian composer & lutenist (though lived and worked in Poland)

neat question, liked that

Thanks. Brilliant work, Mercia

Your E...