How do you compare multiple Einsteins? Well, it's all relative

New opera dresses characters as kids' favourites to portray citizens living in terror

The actress Patricia Medina was a beautiful brunette whose striking features were ideally suited to costume melodrama. British-born, she had a modest career in the UK before moving to Hollywood with her first husband, the actor Richard Greene. Though she played leading lady to such stars as Douglas Fairbanks Jr and Alan Ladd, she never attained major-star status, though she was a spirited performer and voluptuous siren in several swashbucklers and occasionally revealed a latent flair for comedy. Her second husband was another actor, Joseph Cotten, whose prolific career included Citizen Kane, Shadow of a Doubt, Duel in the Sun and The Third Man, and theirs was considered one of Hollywood's happiest marriages, lasting until his death in 1995.

A five-hour Philip Glass opera is one currently on offer

Not just another revival of a venerable old staging but its 25th showing in the 50th year of director John Copley's work at the Royal Opera House. They served up a cake and a vintage cast for the occasion - and the snow fell once more on the Latin Quarter swelling the Christmas Eve crowds at Cafe Momus.

Sari Barabas was a glamorous Hungarian coloratura soprano who, despite the interruption of the Second World War when she was in her twenties, had a long and successful career in opera and operetta. She was a member of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich for 22 years and also sang in Vienna, London and, most memorably of all, perhaps, at Glyndebourne. For five summers during the 1950s she appeared there in three different operas, delighting audiences with her grace and beauty as well as her flexible voice.

Her dramatic gold medal at the Munich Olympics in 1972 ensured her status in her home country of Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles.

The front curtain at the London Coliseum is a rare sight these days and suggested that we might for once be about to experience Wagner’s celebrated Overture without “illustration”.

The English National Opera is set to stage a series of new works next year including a Philip Glass opera about the last days of Walt Disney and an experimental piece scripted by Cloud Atlas author David Mitchell.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt and CMW offer a history of the waltz and other dances in music from Mozart to Johann Strauss and his contemporary Joseph Lanner.

The poet Jakob Lenz (1751-1792) flashed like a shooting-star through the literary firmament, notable less for his output that for his bewitching personal charisma.

The late Manning Marable won the Pulitzer Prize for history yesterday, honoured for a Malcolm X book he worked on for decades but did not live to see published.

First, it was Harrods and then Manchester City football club – now the Gulf is buying culture. Last week, the Royal Opera House (ROH) made its debut in the Gulf, in the culturally thirsty region of the UAE. I decided to pack my bags and head off to the Arab premiere of Beloved Friend at the Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi, as part of the Abu Dhabi Festival.