The three Dumas
This square in the ‘Quarter of the Monceau Plain’ in Paris is now officially called Place du Général-Catroux after the French five-star General Georges Catroux (1877-1969), who was one of Read More …
Author: Nemorino
Hello, my name's Don. I'm an American living in Frankfurt am Main, Land Hessen, Germany, where I teach, ride a bicycle and go to the opera.
Though I have been an avid computer user since 1983 (bit my teeth on a Osborne 1), I am a total novice when it comes to WordPress blogging, so please bear with me as I try to get this all figured out.
Jean-Jacques who?
In the ‘Quarter of the Monceau Plain’, one of the four quarters of the 17th arrondissement in Paris, there is an entire ‘national’ museum devoted to the painter Jean-Jacques Henner Read More …
Rinaldo in Chemnitz
The Baroque composer and impresario Georg Friedrich Händel (1685-1759) was a big fan of special effects, so I’m sure he would have liked the blue-screen production of his opera Rinaldo Read More …
Clotilde de Vaux
Despite the bird droppings and the blue war-paint, this bust at 56 Boulevard Beaumarchais in Paris is still recognizable as a likeness of Clotilde de Vaux (1815-1846), an aspiring young Read More …
Martha in Annaberg-Buchholz
Annaberg-Buchholz is a city of scarcely more than 20,000 people, located in a hilly region called the Erzgebirge (literally ‘Ore-Mountains’) in the German state of Sachsen, near the Czech border. Read More …
Austerlitz Bridge in Paris
The Austerlitz Bridge is a stone bridge with five arches. It was originally built from 1801 to 1805, but it was widened and strengthened twice during the nineteenth century. The Read More …
Gounod at the Opéra Comique
The French composer Charles Gounod (1818-1893) is best known today for two of his operas, Roméo et Juliette (based on the Shakespeare play) and Faust (based on Goethe’s monumental drama). Read More …
The Oasis of Aboukir
The high density of historic buildings in the 2nd district (2ème arrondissement) of Paris leaves little scope for traditional horizontal green spaces, so the botanist and researcher Patrick Blanc (born 1953) Read More …
The Aalto Theater in Essen
In 1958 the city of Essen conducted an architects’ competition to design a modern new opera house. The winner was the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto (1898-1976). Of course just winning Read More …
An opera and a play in Münster
The opera I saw at the City Theater in Münster (Westfalen) was The Cunning Little Vixen (in German Das schlaue Füchslein) by the Czech composer Leoš Janáček (1854-1928). This is Read More …