Carving in Snow

Last week, before a preview screening in Brisbane of the film version of Holding the Man , I joined writer Tommy Murphy for a public talk about how the story came to be, first as memoir, then as theatre, and now as film. It was lovely to be with Tommy, such a crucial figure in how this story has reached a wider audience, and to reflect on what is now a 20-year history adorning the 15-year relationship between Timothy Conigrave and the man he called his husband, John Caleo. Tim was an actor and playwright, but his final form was memoir. Following John’s death on Australia Day 1992, Tim was determined to write a book about his lover. In an interview with James Waites  for a National Library oral history project on HIV/AIDS in Australia, Tim says ‘The only thing I have to live for is these two things that I am writing, which I’d like to finish both of. One’s a play that involves stuff about AIDS but it’s not really about AIDS, and the other one is the book that I’d like to writ

What a fabulous night. I'm just back from Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel , a student production at the Queensland Conservatorium , directed by Michael Gow and conducted by Johannes Fritzsch . How blessed these students are to be working on this glorious score with two great artists. And the design by recent NIDA grad Charles Davis is worthy of any opera house. Great to see the Con devoting significant resources to what must be a priceless learning experience f or the students involved, in the pit and on the stage.  I love this opera. I've known every note for 25 years, and it's a score that keeps on giving. It's a miraculous synthesis of German folkiness and Wagnerian complexity. Humperdinck was a student of Wagner's - he assisted at the premiere of Parsifal , and even wrote a bar or two for a tricky scene transition. Hansel and Gretel , completed in 1893, with a libretto by his sister who urged on the project, is full of Wagner - the climaxes,