Golf and Opera

Okay, you opera buffs, the second act of what opera ends with the following event?
Shepard hits a couple of golf balls and Mitchell throws an improvised javelin.
Give up? You should, since unless you’re really into obscure American operas, you won’t know that this comes from an opera D C Meckler composed at the beginning of this century called Apollo 14: a space opera.
Meckler’s opera is about three men who land on the moon (where one plays golf, briefly), and about the dramatic contrast between their reactions to the space travel. `Mitchell began to rethink the potential of human consciousness. Shepard’s reaction was more about satisfaction and achievement after years of work and frustration, all topped off by the first golf swing on the lunar surface. Roosa said he was unchanged by the experience.’
The opera has never been performed in its entirety, yet, but sections of it have been showcased. There are female parts in it too: Shepherd and Mitchell have ‘inner voices’ sung by sopranos.
And if you thought no other opera was likely to include golf, then think again. Joyce Whitelaw and Eddie Orton wrote Íl Giocatore,'' around the same time as Meckler was working on his opus, and it requires the cast not only to sing about golf, but to play the game in one scene that’s set in the Loch Lomond Golf Club. It was first performed in the Julia Morgan Theatre, Berkeley on Nov 14th, 2000.

Edgar Jepson and Anthony Berkeley

Last month I was talking about the writers of The Floating Admiral, and I’ve just realised that I never finished looking at the writers I didn’t know in the group. The two that are still missing are Edgar Jepson and Anthony Berkeley.
Edgar Jepson, it turns out, is the grandfather of Fay Weldon. Her mother was Jepson’s daughter, Margaret – who was also a writer, and was Jepson’s son, Selwyn. Ah, some family’s have it all.
I like this comment from John Pelan: Jepson proves to be an odd study in contrasts, he wrote popular novels that were, if not best sellers at least enough in demand to make for a relatively comfortable existence for the author and his family. From the same typewriter also flowed popular romances and mystery fiction, as well as literary criticism that met the exacting standards of Ford Maddox Ford. The latter may well have kept Jepson from enjoying a greater popularity in the United States as he found much of the United States literary establishment to be as filled with the same sort of jackanapes and buffoons that pontificate in print to this very day.
Pelan’s full article on Jepson is here.

Anthony Berkeley Cox enlisted in the First World War, and attained the rank of lieutenant, but came out of the war with his health permanently impaired due to being gassed in France. Cox spent time in several occupations including real-estate dealing. He was a director of Publicity Services Ltd and one of the directors of A.B. Cox Ltd. Apart from crime fiction, he also wrote humorous sketches, comic operas, fantasies and political analysis. He wrote under his own name and under the pseudonym 'Francis Iles' and ‘A Monmouth Platts.’ In 1925 he created the amateur sleuth 'Roger Sheringham' and wrote at least a dozen mysteries using this character.