The world of opera is well known as a professional community in which egos often clash, yet the complexity of the operatic artwork is often heavily dependent on collaborative practice. This article discusses the co-creative dynamics that gave rise to the premiere production of the comic opera Je suis narcissiste, by composer Raquel García-Tomás, librettist Helena Tornero and stage director Marta Pazos. Through a series of interviews with this artistic team, and a scrutiny of the libretto, score and documentary video recording of its premiere, three significant features of this collaboration are flagged, particularly in Act VIII. These are: a quest for balance in the convergence of the disciplines involved; a mitigation of undesired redundancies in the representation of some elements in the action of the opera; a consideration of the capacity of the human and material resources available for the premiere. The article will also discuss how these anticipatory strategies helped to optimise time during rehearsals.

The article originally published on pages 179 - 183 of the 2016 Astronomy in Focus Volume 11, Issue A29A, purportedly by Wesley and Sheshadri, was mistakenly included in the issue and should not have been published. During the compilation of the issue, the first page of Wesley and Sheshadri's legitimate article (Wesley & Sheshadri 2016) was combined with other pages from a wholly unrelated LaTeX file, and published in error. The content of this pseudo-article makes no sense, and should not be used or cited. Therefore, the pages of this pseudo-article have been removed from the online version of the issue and replaced with blank pages watermarked as ‘WITHDRAWN’. We have decided to remove the article completely to avoid confusion with the correct article by Wesley and Sheshadri, who were not involved in the creation of this error.

We apologise to the authors Wesley and Sheshadri, and to readers for this mistake.

This article argues for a distinction between reticence and lying on the basis of what Kant says about reticence in his correspondence with Maria von Herbert and in his other ethical writings, and defends this distinction against the objections of Rae Langton (‘Duty and Desolation’, Philosophy 67, No. 262 (October 1992), 481–505). Lying is necessarily deceptive, whereas reticence is not necessarily deceptive. Allowing another person to remain ignorant of some matter is a form of reticence that is not deceptive. This form of reticence may be ethically permissible.

We studied the modulation of oscillatory resistance (Ros) by viewing and imagery of affective pictures. Thirty nonasthmatic participants viewed 36 affective slides precategorized as positive, neutral, and negative in valence. Each picture was presented for 15 s, followed by an imagery epoch of 15 s. Ros, facial EMGs, respiration, skin conductance response, heart period, and respiratory sinus arrhythmia were measured throughout the session, as well as viewing time and ratings of pleasure, arousal, and interest. Increases of Ros were observed for negative pictures, and little changes for positive or neutral pictures. Other physiological parameters did not mirror this response pattern, leaving no clear indication for a ventilatory or vagal origin of Ros changes. Overall differences between behavioral contexts of visual processing and imagery revealed evidence for a coupling of cardiac and respiratory responses, which included changes in Ros. The findings in Ros are discussed in the light of earlier discrepant findings on the affective modulation of airway resistance and cardiac activity.