The Saturday briefing
Is there anything you are desperately yearning to know? Are there any pressing factual disputes you would like us to help resolve? This is the page where we shall do our best to answer any questions you throw at us, whatever the subject.
I BELIEVE the wonderful Spanish soprano Montserrat Caballé received a record number of curtain calls after appearing in an opera. What was the opera, where was it performed and how many curtain calls were there?
Michael Parker, Evesham, Worcester THE legendary Montserrat Caballé did indeed receive a large number of curtain calls for her performance of Bellini’s opera Norma at the Théâtre Antique d’Orange in Vaucluse, France, in 1974 but I don’t think it was a record.
That is held by Luciano Pavarotti for his 165 curtain calls for his performance in Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin in 1988.
The applause on that occasion went on for one hour, seven minutes, though for sheer applause length, the record is held by Placido Domingo for one hour 20 minutes applause (and 101 curtain calls) at the Vienna State Opera production of Verdi’s Otello in 1991.
CAN you tell me the longestrunning programme on British television?
David Garbutt, by email IF we ignore such generic programmes as the news and the weather forecast, the three longest-running programmes are Panorama (on our screens since 1953), The Sky At Night (since 1957) and Blue Peter (since 1958).
IN a standard London Monopoly game Mayfair can be purchased for £400. How much of Mayfair would £400 buy today?
Stuart Bentley, Ilford, Essex THE latest report I’ve seen gives property prices in Mayfair at an average of £2,383 per square foot, so £400 gets you about one sixth of a square foot, which is 24 square inches. This is approximately the area of the back of your hand. Not much room to build four houses or a hotel on, I’d say.
On the other hand, the £2,000 cost for landing on Mayfair with a hotel built on it compares well to the “from £1,795” price quoted for the one-bedroom Piccadilly Suite at the Ritz, Mayfair. I HAVE read that the singer Bobby Darin grew up believing his grandmother was his mother and the woman he thought was his elder sister was his true mother, and they say he only found out the truth at the age of 32. Is this true, and if so, how did he find out?
C Pope, Isle of Wight IT’S absolutely true. The singer Bobby Darin was brought up by his grandparents, whom he believed were his parents. His real mother was the woman he thought was his sister Nina.
She had fallen pregnant after an affair when she was 17 and decided to have the baby and break up with the father whose name she left off the birth certificate and never divulged.
Only when Bobby became involved in politics as a highprofile supporter of Robert Kennedy did his real mother reveal the truth, knowing that if he ran for public office his opponents would scour the records and use them to discredit him.
His family surname, incidentally, was Cassotto and he took his stage name “Darin” from a faulty sign on a restaurant called “Chinese Mandarin” of which the first three letters of Mandarin were not working. IN both January and March this year we have two full moons, which is something so unusual it is called a “blue moon”. To have two months so close together having blue moons must be really exceptional. What are the chances of it happening? Tell me more! Jean Batchelor, Sandbach, Cheshire AS the moon takes 29.5 days to complete a cycle from one full moon to the next, full moons are 29 or 30 days apart, which is why we generally get one per month.
Since February has only 28 days in non-leap years, if January has two full moons on the 1st or 2nd and 30th or 31st, then March will be likely to do so as well.
This will occur about once every 15 years, although it’s only eight years – 2010 – since it last happened. by DID any Germans stand trial for the atrocity at Oradour-surGlane in France in June 1944. Did any of the townsfolk survive the atrocity?
JB Dootson, Chorley, Lancashire A GERMAN Waffen-SS company massacred 642 inhabitants of Oradour-sur-Glane on June 10, 1944, and destroyed the village in retaliation for partisan activity. The dead comprised 190 men, 247 women and 205 children.
In 1953 a military tribunal in France heard charges against 66 members of the Waffen-SS who had taken part in the massacre of whom only 21 had been arrested as the others were in East Germany which refused to extradite them.
Twenty defendants were found guilty, including 14 Frenchmen who said they had been forced to join the SS.
An amnesty was given to the Frenchmen a week later and by 1958 all the Germans had also been released.
Only six villagers escaped the massacre and last April Emmanuel Macron, during his presidential campaign, visited Oradour-sur-Glane to meet Robert Hébras, now 92, the last living survivor. GIVEN the amount of footwear required by the royal household, does it have an in-house cobbler? Shirley Mulvana, Ayr, Scotland NOT quite, but John Lobb, Bootmaker, has held royal