Featured posts of the week or month (or quarter)
(depending on how often I get around to changing them)
Cutting edge technology …
… of bygone decades. In the winter of 1989 one of the monthly computer magazines — I forget if it was a German or an American one — came out with an article called The Ten Worst Computers of the 1980s. As the absolutely worst computer of the decade they Read More ...
It’s a beautiful day in Chicago
Everett Mitchell (1898-1990) was the host of a nationally broadcast NBC radio program called (deep breath here): THE NATIONAL FARM AND HOME HOUR. It came on every Saturday at 12 noon and was broadcast live from WMAQ’s legendary Studio A on the twentieth floor of the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, Read More ...
Belleville
Belleville is a traditionally working-class district in the east of Paris, straddling the 19th and 20th arrondissements. I think I first heard of Belleville from Puccini’s opera Il tabarro (the first of the three short operas of Il trittico), in which the illicit lovers Giorgetta and Luigi discover that they Read More ...
Franz Kafka Museum
This unusual and wonderfully creative museum consists of a long-term exhibition called “The City of K., Franz Kafka and Prague”, which originated in another city entirely, namely Barcelona, where it opened in 1999. Numerous people from Barcelona were involved in creating the exhibition, which seems to have benefited enormously from Read More ...
Arrival in Tân Ba 1964
From October 1964 to March 1965 I was the lowest ranking member of a five-man American “advisory team” stationed in a small Vietnamese village called Tân Ba on the bank of the Dong Nai River. At night we could see the lights of Biên Hòa air base across the river Read More ...
Tempelhof Park
The former Tempelhof Airport, best known as the landing place for American supply planes during the Berlin Airlift of 1948-1949, is now a public park. Since the old runways are still intact it’s a great place for cycling, inline skating and jogging. Also there is plenty of space for kite-flying, Read More ...
Fine Arts Museum in Nancy
When I go to art museums I am always glad to see paintings on themes that I ‘know’ because they have also been made into operas. In Nancy I was especially glad to come across a large canvas entitled “The Destruction of the Palace of Armide”, which vividly illustrates a Read More ...
Operas by Giuseppe Verdi
During his long career, Giuseppe Verdi composed twenty-six operas — or twenty-eight, depending what you count as what. The following list is the 28-opera version, with the year of the world premiere in parentheses after each title. I have listed the opera titles in different colors: Red means I have Read More ...
Don’t let your stepdaughter read this
Salome was the daughter of Herodias and the stepdaughter of Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea. Her story is told in the Bible (Mark 6:21-28): And when a convenient day was come, that Herod on his birthday made a supper to his lords, high captains, and chief estates of Read More ...
Frankfurt OperaTalk
For over two decades, I taught opera appreciation courses in German and English at the Volkshochschule Frankfurt (VHS), the city’s adult education center. I started the German-language Opern-Gespräche in 1999, and added the English-language Frankfurt OperaTalk in 2002. Both these courses were still going strong in March 2020, when they Read More ...
Conversation and more
The photos in this post are by a professional photographer, Rolf Oeser, who happens to have been a long-time participant in one of my English courses at the Frankfurt Adult Education Center (VHS). Rolf’s photos appear nearly every day in the Frankfurter Rundschau, one of the city’s three daily newspapers. Read More ...
Opern-Gespräche
Mehr als zwei Jahrzehnte lang, von Oktober 1999 bis März 2020, habe ich einen Kurs namens Opern-Gespräche an der Volkshochschule Frankfurt geleitet. In diesem Kurs haben wir — nicht nur ich! — uns mit fachkundigen Gästen aus dem Opernbetrieb über das reichhaltige Frankfurter Operngeschehen unterhalten. Die Diskussionen waren fast immer Read More ...