Anna Selby

6 days ago | arbuturian.com | Anna Selby

With soaring temperatures and more colour than the Notting Hill Carnival, Opera Holland Park’s Merry Widow surely epitomises summer in the city. In fact, Franz Lehár’s 1905 comedy about bankruptcy, infidelity and social climbing has been transposed to a couple of other cities – NYC and Paris – plus a detour to Sicily. The story has been updated, too, by D’Oyly Carte’s John Savournin (who also directs) alongside David Eaton, and is now in strictly Godfather (as in the film) territory.

2 weeks ago | arbuturian.com | Anna Selby

It’s not often a bar has a real story to tell, but 40 Elephants, tucked inside the Hyatt just off Whitehall has exactly that. Housed in the highly salubrious buildings of Old Scotland Yard, its USP is its history that they celebrate here not so much in the stories of the police as the perps. One set of perps in particular – an all-women gang based around Elephant and Castle and known, perhaps not completely flatteringly, as the 40 Elephants.

2 weeks ago | arbuturian.com | Anna Selby

In this month’s spa column, Anna returns for another dose of the Dolomites. Well, summer in the mountains, eh? So good, we went there twice…In Ladin, “La Majun” means, quite simply, “barn”, a reflection of its traditional shape. Ladin? In the Dolomites, you’ll find a series of valleys where they have their own unique language, recognised by the Italian government and taught in schools from nursery age upwards (along with Italian and German – we could learn a thing or two there). But what is Ladin?

2 weeks ago | telegraph.co.uk | Anna Selby

This cinematic stalwart may have been delighting British and American audiences for 60 years, but the inhabitants of Salzburg don't get itTo celebrate the 60 th anniversary of The Sound of Music movie earlier this year, Peter Husty, Chief Curator of the Salzburg Museum, decided to mark it - appropriately enough - with a tune. The carillon of bells on the top of the museum can play most anything, as Maria sings in the film.

3 weeks ago | telegraph.co.uk | Paula Hardy |Johnny Prince |Anna Selby |Claudia Winkleman

After a difficult few decades, visitors are returning to the North African nation in their droves - and it's easier than ever to join themI had started my week in Fes, at the World Sacred Music Festival, where I was seated in a royal ceremonial space, Bab Makina, watching whirling dervishes, chanting sufi sects, the angelic-voiced French mezzo-soprano, Battista Acquaviva, and the sama of Meknes whose rapturous polyphonic songs preserve some of the most beautiful Arabic poetry of Al-Andalus.