A little bit of loveliness for your Friday.

It's a magnificent gift to introduce children to our Western cultural heritage.

(The Islamic State showed us what life's like without it - no museums, no statues, execution for possessing a musical instrument and a life of drudgery set against a dull black backdrop.  Mohammed understood the ethereal uplifting power of music and decided that Allah couldn't compete.)

Australia produced one of the operatic world's greatest superstars, La Stupenda.

On 9 November 2010 Australia's prime minister strode onto the Sydney Opera House stage at the State Memorial Service for the late Dame Joan Sutherland OM AC DBE.

It was the first time the 49 year old had visited the Opera House.

Ms Gillard gave one of those rare speeches in which the self-important disclose so much about themselves and nothing about their subject: 

She* absorbed the sound of her mother’s beautiful voice as easily as she breathed the air itself, giving her a sense of effortless achievement that later helped transform potential into legend.

La Stupenda's excellence was the result of years and years and years of education, training, discipline and practice, practice, practice. Try telling Angel and the kids that you can be an Opera singer "as easily as breathing the air" with a career of "effortless achievement"!  That only happens in politics.

The operatic oeuvre is replete with women of real grace, depth and power.

I'll leave you with Wagner's Valkyrie, the powerful dames of Wagner's Ring Cycle.

These women fly down from their overwatch positions to the scene of a recent battle - to chose which warriors of honour should ascend to Valhalla and which to the fires of the underworld.

No misogyny there!

* Sorry about the verbatim quote which refers to "She".  My grandmother always said "She's the cat's mother".