Singer says that the boys’ only line-up at the Christmas Eve event is “cruel” for any girls who enjoy singing and are good enough – and is a “complete anachronism”
For 100 years King’s College Cambridge has held a Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols on Christmas Eve – with an all-male line up.
But acclaimed opera singer Lesley Garett has called on the choir to admit girls for the first time, saying that the exclusion of one half of the population is a “complete anachronism” and a “throwback to a bygone age”.
Writing in the latest issue of Radio Times, the singer notes that the event, which is broadcast by the BBC and around the world, is performed by one of only a few male only ecclesiastical choirs – 11 at the last count – that don’t have girls singing the top line trebles. And she says that needs to change.
.. She adds: “Backward looking traditionalists argue that there’s an exclusive purity in the boy’s voice – what Benjamin Britten called the ‘tremulous beauty’ of the boys’ treble voice – but I think that’s just nonsense.
On Kobe Bryant
WHAT STARTLES MOST about Kobe Bryant is his longevity. He has played in the NBA for twenty years. Few, if any, have played so well for so long. But longevity was also Kobe’s curse. He lasted into an era that had no use for him, an anachronism. By the time he won his last two championships, he was already being eclipsed by a player (LeBron) who was historically better.
.. What once seemed like a kind of vicious genius became what it perhaps always was: theatrical, ritualistic gestures toward a game that no one played any more, and with reason.
.. The era of analytics has not been kind to him, and histories written with the statistics in mind will be merciless. PER, VORP, plus/minus: all give us a Kobe who was never the best player in the league and often bad for his team.
.. Scrutinizers will continue to point out the selfless masters who didn’t or won’t enjoy Kobe’s long sendoff: the doe-eyed Tim Duncan; Kevin Garnett, another straight-out-of-high-school great; the tragic Steve Nash, possessed of possibly the worst haircut in the history of the sport, deprived of his ring by the infamous hip check from the malicious Robert Horry (who undeservedly has seven). These figures were transformative in a way Kobe will prove not to be.
.. He was a sociopath, and his deep-seated contempt drove him to become one of the most beautiful athletes
.. It’s curious how few post-mortems have mentioned the 2003 sexual assault case that, had it taken place in an era of social media, would have sunk his career.