Best known for his film scores for Alfred Hitchcock, including Vertigo, Psycho and The Birds, Bernard Herrmann (1911-75) had parallel ambitions to write music for performance away from the silver screen. His three-and-a-half-hour opera based on Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, completed in 1951, was not staged in his lifetime. He partly funded the only recording of it. Now the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (Chandos), conducted by Mario Venzago, have recorded an hour-long suite from the opera, arranged by Hans Sørensen, played atmospherically and with top singers: soprano Keri Fuge as Cathy and baritone Roderick Williams as Heathcliff. Williams’s opening cry of “Cathy!” sets the chilling tone, with the orchestra’s brooding gusts transporting us instantly to the windswept Yorkshire moors. The suite is coupled with Echoes for string orchestra (another Sørensen arrangement, originally for string quartet). The opera doesn’t entirely sustain that first promise, or make you wish to see it on stage, but don’t pass up this chance to hear another side of this fertile composer. (Fiona Maddocks)

The bleak beauty of Haworth’s moorland landscape that shaped Emily, Charlotte and Anne Brontë is famously synonymous with their work.

This month, the Brontë Festival of Women’s Writing celebrates the great outdoors with a creative, empowering programme showcasing female creativity, alongside an inherent connection to the wild. Leading female writers, poets, artists and experts take centre stage in this key date in the diary at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

This year’s festival - taking place in person and online - “amplifies the voices of women who are driving conversations in sustainability”. Inspired by the museum’s Year of the Wild, exploring the Brontës’ connection to nature and the landscape, the festival features talks, workshops, panel discussions and participatory events, as well as free family activities throughout the weekend (...) (Rread more) (Emma Clayton)

Fennell also has nods to Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. And let’s not forget a splash of Gosford Park and Downton Abbey. (Baz Bamigboye)

La precursora: Cumbres borrascosas, de Emily Brontë (1847)

Unir este clásico con «Drácula« podría tildarse de estirar el chicle pero lo cierto es que cuando leí esta novela el personaje de Heathcliff me recordó a estos seres sobrenaturales. 

De apariencia humana, pero extraña, con algo que nos hace sentir incómodos y que es aterrador sólo con su presencia. Quién sabe si Bram Stoker había leído la novela y este personaje pudo inspirarlo para crear a Drácula (o no). Es evidente que es bien posible que hubiera leído la novela pues Bram Stoker nació en Londres el mismo año en el que se publicó Cumbres Borrascosas y para cuando él llegó a su edad adulta, pudo haber tenido conocimiento de Cumbres borrascosas a través de la ya afamada Jane Eyre, de su hermana Charlotte. (Ione Monje Martinez) (Translation)