大象传媒

This week, Woman鈥檚 Hour is celebrating the 200th birthday of Giuseppe Verdi 鈥� one of the giants of 19th century opera. Until his death in 1901, he dominated Italian opera and his beautiful Romantic music is as popular today as it was during his lifetime. The arias, in particular, have drawn audiences to opera theatres over the years as well as Verdi鈥檚 eye for theatrical spectacle, a gripping storyline and complex characters. Amongst these characters are some of opera鈥檚 most interesting roles for female singers鈥�.virgins and courtesans, princesses and slaves, witches and gypsies, mothers and daughters and a feisty quartet of Tudor townswomen in Verdi's final opera, Falstaff. , on and on Thursday, Radio 3 presenter Catherine Bott took a look at the role of Violetta, the consumptive courtesan in La Traviata. Today, Jenni talks to Verdi scholar Susan Rutherford and music critic David Nice about the women in Verdi鈥檚 life and the music he wrote for female voices.听听听

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Susan Rutherford鈥檚 鈥榁erdi, Opera, Women鈥� is published by Cambridge University Press in November and her Radio 3 documentary -听- is broadcast on Saturday, 12th October.听

The Red Brigade is a group of women in India who have formed a vigilante group to fight back against sexual molestation and violence. All of the women have been victims of an attack and they make it their business to humiliate men who perpetrate sexual violence. It is not the first female only vigilante group to form in India, the Gulabi or 鈥楶ink鈥� gang have received international recognition in their fight for gender and caste equality. So why do women form vigilante groups and how are they viewed by the communities in which they fight? Jenni is joined by Amana Fontanella-Khan, author of and Dr Atreyee Sen, an expert in female vigilante groups at the .

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On Tuesda On Tuesday this week, a post, and subsequent conversation thread, on one of the Mumsnet messageboards almost crashed its server. Since then, nearly 800 contributions have been made to the discussion which contains graphic and candid descriptions of how people clean themselves up after sex.听Do women over-share when it comes to communicating online? Jenni is joined by Kate Williams, editor of the bloggers network and Lucy Porter joins the discussion.听