Canadian-born Mel Cooper first came to the UK to study English Literature at Oxford University and stayed. He was captivated by the culture and history of Britain, which he found to be a welcoming and tolerant country. After working in highly illustrated, non-fiction publishing for over a decade, he founded and edited the magazine Opera Now. Since then he has worked as a consultant to the Japanese broadcaster NHK, a broadcaster on British Satellite Broadcasting, a maker of audio shows and arts critic for several airlines, and as one of the team that started Britain’s first commercial classical music radio station, Classic FM, on which he was both a classical music DJ and creator and presenter of shows like Classic America and Authentic
Performance. Throughout this period, he also lectured in music and literature in London and Oxford and published short stories in Canada. After working with the Genesis Foundation on helping to fund arts projects, he continues to write, review and lecture on music and literature. His first novel has just been published as an e-book. The title is City of Dreams. It is the first volume of a projected saga called The Dream Bearers. You can find the Kindle version of the book on Amazon.
I have never seen the film that was made of The Shawshank Redemption, a novella by Stephen King that is not quite his usual kind of horro story; and n...
If I could give this production of Shakespeare’s play The Tempest more than five stars, I would. This is one of those rare productions that I believe ...
The success of the hit show Mamma Mia! comes, I believe, from the fact that it is not just another jukebox musical. In fashioning the book and the sho...
The brand new production by the Welsh National Opera of Janáček penultimate opera, The Makropulos Affair, is, quite simply, a brilliant, flawless pres...
The hit jukebox musical Beautiful – The Carole King Musical has been adapted for a production in which all the actors and singers are also playing the...
As a very entertaining gift to us all, the producer Adam Spiegel has arranged to create a 70th anniversary tour of Agatha Christie’s legendary play Th...
Dinner with Groucho is a kind of one-act fantasia on the historic fact that T S Eliot and Groucho Marx were pen pals who met once late in their lives ...
The Frantic Assembly production doing the rounds at the moment calling itself Shakespeare’s Othello (coming to the Lyric Hammersmith for a decent run ...
All that glitters is gold in the 1977 disco classic Saturday Night Fever reimagined for the stage by Bill Kenwright and starring Jack Wilcox and Rebek...
