Perplexity

The Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross: A Challenge - It was indeed a wager this commission offered to Haydn by a canon of Cadiz on the occasion of Good Friday 6 April 1787 for the Oratory of La Santa Cueva ( e Holy Cave) in that town: to compose seven adagios corresponding to the last seven words of Christ on the cross. When Haydn received the request he happened to be with the abbé Stadler and the com- poser told him of his perplexity as to how to realize such a work, “not really knowing how to write with enough variety seven adagios in succession…” e challenge was accepted thanks to his exceptional genius. is first version for orchestra was to find considerable success and was for the composer “the nest of all my works”.

Made at the time when steam trains were being supplanted by diesel, Enginemen lovingly records not only the men who work and look after the engines, but also the machines themselves. Enginemen was filmed in and around a locomotive shed in Newton Heath outside Manchester and was shot over a period of 18 months, early on Saturday mornings, with virtually no equipment other then a 16mm camera and a tape recorder.

Against a background of war breaking out in Europe and the Mexican fiesta Day of Death, we are taken through one day in the life of Geoffrey Firmin, a British consul living in alcoholic disrepair and obscurity in a small southern Mexican town in 1939. The Consul's self-destructive behaviour, perhaps a metaphor for a menaced civilization, is a source of perplexity and sadness to his nomadic, idealistic half-brother, Hugh, and his ex-wife, Yvonne, who has returned with hopes of healing Geoffrey and their broken marriage.