5/8 of an opera in the Palmengarten 2004

To add to the excitement of an open-air performance, you never know how the weather is going to develop in this part of the world. For the summer performances of the Frankfurt Chamber Opera (Kammeroper), the bandstand of the Palmengarten is used as the stage, and it has a roof Read More …

Joan of Arc in St Gallen

The big open-air opera production at the St Gallen Festival in 2022 was supposed to have been Orleanskaja dewa (The Maid of Orleans) by the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893). But then, (as the general director of the St Gallen Theater explained it in the German opera magazine Das Read More …

Touring the Butterfly stage on Lake Constance

In July 2022, after a gap of seventeen years, I returned to Bregenz and took another tour of the festival grounds and the lakefront stage, this time to see the stage that had been built up for Andreas Homoki’s new production of Madame Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924). Since I Read More …

Rossini in the Kornmarkt Theater

Bregenz, Austria, is best known for its open-air opera performances at the lakefront stage on Lake Constance, but the town also has a conventional theater building called the Theater am Kornmarkt, which is used each year from September through June as the main venue of the Vorarlberger Landestheater, the state Read More …

Trolleybuses in Luzern

Right in front of my hotel in Luzern (aka Lucerne) was a bus stop where every five minutes (during peak hours) a 24-meter double-articulated electric trolleybus glided in silently and stopped to discharge and pick up passengers. Since I was there during a heat wave which made cycling unattractive, and Read More …

Cruising on Lake Lucerne

Lake Lucerne in central Switzerland has always seemed mysterious to me because of its German name Vierwaldstättersee, which looks as though it ought to mean ‘Four-Woods-Place-Lake.’ But it turns out that Waldstätte is simply an old-fashioned regional word for Canton, and the name Vierwaldstättersee means that the lake used to Read More …

Richard Wagner Museum in Luzern

When I arrived in Luzern (aka Lucerne) I was surprised to see a sign pointing to a Richard Wagner Museum. I had come to Luzern to see an opera by Giuseppe Verdi, and had completely forgotten that Wagner lived here off and on during his long exile from Germany resulting Read More …

Verdi’s Macbeth in Luzern

The Luzerner Theater is on the left bank of the Reuss River, at the lower end of Lake Lucerne (Vierwaldstättersee in German). The theater dates from 1839, and now describes itself as “the oldest multi-genre venue in Central Switzerland” and as “one of the largest cultural institutions, offering a variety Read More …

Plan for Luzern central station

The central railway station in Luzern (aka Lucerne), Switzerland, is at present a purely terminal station, meaning that all fourteen tracks end there. The only way for a train to leave the station is to change directions and go out the same way it came in. In former times, this Read More …

SkyGuide at the Transport Museum

As a non-flyer, I wasn’t planning on spending much time (if any) in the aviation exhibits at the Swiss Transport Museum in Luzern. But then by mistake I chose the wrong museum entrance and found myself in a high-tech exhibit on SkyGuide, the Swiss air traffic control agency. Under ordinary Read More …

Cycling at night in Paris

One of the things I really love is cycling home at night after the opera. This is even more magical in Paris because you not only have the opera going through your head, you also have Paris all around you. You do have to look out for the taxis, though, Read More ...

The Lady and the Unicorn

The most famous and most intriguing exhibit in the Cluny Museum is “La Dame à la licorne” (The Lady and the Unicorn). This exhibit consists of six large tapestries on display in a special rounded room with subdued light. Five of these tapestries show the five senses; Taste, Sight, Touch, Read More ...

The sun in its travels …

Avignon was the hub of the universe for most of the fourteenth century. Or at least the hub of Western European Christianity. What happened was that in 1309 Pope Clement V settled in Avignon with his Cardinals and the entire Papal Court, because Rome was in constant turmoil. Seven (or Read More ...

Mekong Delta tour 1995

Towards the end of our Vietnam trip in 1995 Nick and I took a three-day bus tour of the Mekong Delta at the southern end of Vietnam. This excellent tour was organized by the original (and at that time only) Sinh Café, which is now called TheSinhTourist to differentiate it Read More ...

The Hölderlin Path

These signs near the Goethe House, in the center of Frankfurt, show the beginnings of the Hölderlin Path (22 km) and the Goethe Trail (11 km). From here, the Hölderlin Path goes off to the left and the Goethe Trail goes off to the right — which is appropriate considering Read More ...

The Weikersheim Planetary Trail

The Weikersheim Planetary Trail begins on the Tauber Valley Cycling Route at the northern edge of the city of Weikersheim. A yellow sphere, about one and a half meters in diameter, represents the sun at a scale of 1:1,000,000,000. From there you start walking or cycling slightly uphill towards the Read More ...

The clean-up man

Clip clop (or rather klip klop) go the horses’ hooves that echo through the pedestrianized streets around the Cathedral and Saint Peter’s Abbey and the Festival Halls of Salzburg. Tourists who want a small dose of nostalgia can go around to Residenzplatz, on the north side of the Cathedral, and Read More ...

Where the opera singers eat sausages

At Bellevue Square, just a block and a half from the opera house, is the most celebrated of Zürich’s many sausage stands, the Sternen Grill (Star Grill). They serve their sausages with ultra-sharp mustard, so be careful, otherwise you’ll feel like this cartoon character: The cartoon, which is displayed proudly Read More ...

Aux Désirs de Manon

At 129 rue Saint Antoine in the Marais district of Paris there is a small bakery and pastry shop with the marvelous name Aux Désirs de Manon, referring to the heroine of the novel Manon Lescaut by Abbé Prévost (1697-1763) — a novel which was the inspiration for operas by Read More ...

Harbor tour in Cherbourg

These people lined up on the pier at Pont Tournant are waiting to board a boat called the Adèle, to take them on a one-hour tour of the harbor in Cherbourg, France. It is also possible to embark on the Quai de France, near the Cité de la Mer. This Read More ...

Victor Hugo at the Place des Vosges

Victor Hugo was 35 in the year 1837, when this bust was sculpted by his friend David d’Angers. By that time, Hugo had already published his novel Notre-Dame de Paris (known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame), as well as several volumes of poetry and plays such as Hernani Read More ...

The Anomaly

As I was walking from the Bois-Colombes railway station towards Villa Osouf, I came across this bookshop, Nouvelle & Cie at 69 rue Bourguignons. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, I hadn’t been in a French bookshop for nearly two years, so I went in — and discovered from a display Read More ...

Nemorino's travels

aka operasandcycling.com