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Gavin Plumley

As seen in: The Guardian, The Independent (UK), Playbill, Country Life, Literary Review, Engelsberg Ideas
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Articles by Gavin Plumley

Bruegel had a Worldview

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By Gavin Plumley, Atlantic Books
| Engelsberg Ideas
Given the paucity of current political debate, the notion of holding a worldview seems quaint. The self-serving dominate, as mindsets close. It’s a parlous situation, particularly when most of our crises, climatic or military, demand the opposite. Luckily, we can turn to the past for guidance, including to the philosopher Immanuel Kant, who came up with the idea of a worldview. In his 1790 Critique of Judgment, he called it Weltanschauung.
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Adrian Tinniswood - Call the Dendrochronologist

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By Gavin Plumley
| Literary Review Verified
Afew years ago, Gavin Plumley and his husband, Alastair, bought a house in the Herefordshire village of Pembridge. It was a good choice: Pembridge is a famously attractive spot. In fact, Pevsner, in a rare burst of enthusiasm, declared it to be one of the prettiest villages in the county, on account of its abundance of black-and-white buildings, ‘hardly disturbed by Georgian brick, though disastrously disturbed by some recent filling stations’. That was back in 1963.
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Hans Rott - a symphonic stepping stone

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By Gavin Plumley
| Engelsberg Ideas
Despite his many hardships, the Viennese composer’s work was a crucial bridge from the Romantic to the Modern. No man is an island, and all that. But when you listen to the music of Gustav Mahler, he seems like a man apart. With cowbells jangling and alphorns calling, his symphonies are instantly recognisable. Surely, however, a figure whose centre was Vienna, the musical capital of the world, couldn’t have existed in isolation.
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How Bartlett Sher Finds Dark Resonance in Verdi’s Rigoletto

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By Gavin Plumley
| Playbill Verified
Bartlett Sher’s new staging of Verdi’s Rigoletto opens at the Metropolitan Opera on New Year’s Eve. In March 1851, Verdi’s Rigoletto wowed an unsuspecting crowd at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice. The surprise was twofold. Not only was the composer following one of his worst flops, Stiffelio, but he was also adapting a highly controversial text: Victor Hugo’s Le Roi s’Amuse, which had been banned far and wide for its combination of brutal violence and biting criticism of the ruling class.
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