Music

I have essentially zero musical talent, but I do enjoy listening, and have a rather eclectic range of interests, including blues, folk, classical (especially chamber music; yes, I confess to being one of those people who would agree with whoever it was who opined that Beethoven's late quartets are the pinnacle of western musical composition), and -- most fanatically -- opera, particularly Wagner . If you're as much of a Wagnerphile as I am, you might want to click on his name for a long list of Wagner links. One of my favourite places to visit is Derrick Everett's Parsifal homepage. And if you'd like a Wagner-related link that's a lot of fun, and doesn't take itself at all seriously, have a look at Godfrey Daniels' Wagner Zentral, and follow the links. Particularly amusing is "Wagner Meets Mr. Potatoe Head", about an encounter with Dan Quayle.

There's more Wagner-related stuff if you follow the links to the second and third “Warholish fifteen minutes of fame” here.

To digress from opera for a moment (but only a moment), please don't forget about Elvis.

I'm also quite fond of Philip Glass; good places to visit are here and here (though the latter seems not to have been updated since November 2002, and contains a number of broken hyperlinks).

PS: Hmm, the Wagner-links page appears to no longer exist at http://www.festspiele.de ... I'll try to see whether there's a comparable list elsewhere.

UPDATE (May 2006): Looks like the Wagner Society of New South Wales has some useful links, albeit not as complete as the Bayreuth Festival website formerly had ...