survey proves 100% of journalists will swallow any old cheesy balls

The press have been quick to leap on a new Reader's Digest survey which sets out to show that Britons aren't too knowledgeable about classical music.

4% of those questioned wrongly identified Bocconcini as a classical composer, sneer the Guardian, Telegraph and Evening Standard, when it really means small Italian cheese balls.

Except that it doesn't.

Bocconcini are in fact either ball-shaped cheeses like mozzarella or anything served in small pieces such as bocconcini di vitello (pieces of veal). There's a world of difference between a ball-shaped cheese and a cheese ball. As a cursory fact-check of the press release would prove, even to the most hardened Pot Noodle lover on the news desk.

In any case, I'm more impressed by the fact that 96% of respondents realised that Bocconcini *isn't* a classical composer.

Comments

[Mark Berry]

Or indeed that an unspecified percentage could distinguish between bocconcini and Bononcini... I might have slipped up on a casual reading.

[Nikolaus Vogel]

Or Boccherini for that matter. Well, it's the silly season and journalists have to spew out mouthfuls (bocconcini) of drivel while Cameron is on holiday in Cornwall and Blair is dreaming up ever more elaborate schemes to increase his pots of gold. As Intermezzo says, it's amazing that 96% knew that Bocconcini wasn't a composer. This item would struggle to make it into Private Eye's Dumb Britain feature.

[Danceny]

Meanwhile what the press is not reporting is that the Royal Opera will be miraculously in two places at once next month. Disappearing off to Japan to be a Gheorghiu/ Netrebko support band...

...while simultaneously doing ballets and a run of Jonathan Miller's Cosi in London.

They were happy to mention a ballet tour in their season's programme

but, mysteriously, not the opera tour.

[inter mezzo]

@Danceny the Japan tour does in fact have its own separate section on the ROH website, but like everything else, it's hard to find. It's also been covered extensively in their magazine - and on this site back in April and May: http://intermezzo.typepad.com/intermezzo/2010/05/royal-opera-house-2010-autumn-season.html

And they have been perfectly open about the reason for doing Cosi, which is that the forces required are minimal. It's the press's own choice not to cover this.

So not guilty - this time round.

[Nikolaus Vogel]

Intermezzo - can't you start a campaign to get the ROH to improve its website? It must be the worse of any major opera house in the world. Why can't they have a calender like the German companies' Spielplans where you can click on the performance you might be contemplating attending and get the cast and all the other detail? Sorry if you have dwelt on this topic at length in the past, but it's maddening.

[Cecilia Rivers]

Actually the ENO site is even worse. I have a fairly powerful computer and good broadband, but it simply will not download. I have tried on several occasions over many months. WTF? Sort it out, you guys.

Also, as a classical music-loving Italian, I'd also be slightly thrown by the Bononcini-Bocconcini assonance. Let alone the fact that there might well some obscure signor Bocconcini beavering away at his masterpiece symphony as we speak. Who's to tell?

[Nikolaus Vogel]

And Danceny - the Royal Opera don't do ballet - the Royal Ballet does. Completely separate companies both resident at the Royal Opera House. It's great that one can fill in when the other is away!