The Villlemin Garden (Jardin Villemin) is a public park in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, between the East Station (Gare de l’Est) and the Canal Saint Martin. It is named after Jean-Antoine Villemin (1827–1892), a French army physician who was the first to demonstrate that tuberculosis is an infectious disease. Read More …
Désamiantage is a new French word I learned recently. It means asbestos removal, and is one of the reasons the Centre Pompidou aka Beaubourg will be closed for five years, from 2025 to 2030. Originally the closure was scheduled for 2023 to 2027, but it has been postponed because of Read More …
As in my Verdi list, I have listed the titles of Richard Strauss’s operas in three different colors: Red means I have seen the opera at least once (but usually more often than that) on stage, with costumes, stage sets, lighting, acting, etc. Green means I have only seen it in Read More …
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 …
Salome, by Richard Strauss, is a difficult opera to cast. The singer of the title role has to be a dramatic soprano with a huge voice that will carry over a full-power 110-piece orchestra, which usually means a Brunnhilde-type in her fifties. On the other hand, the character of Salome Read More …
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 …
In October 2013 the Rodin Museum presented an exhibition of twenty-two sculptures of Camille Claudel (1864-1943), including some that had not been on display for several years during the ongoing renovation of the museum. The exposition’s introductory brochure said that Camille Claudel “has become an almost too familiar figure today: Read More …
It’s a nice coincidence that Saverio Mercadante’s name ends in -dante, because it was the poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) who saved Mercadante’s opera heroine Francesca da Rimini from being totally forgotten. As the dramaturge Mareike Wink writes in the Frankfurt program booklet to Mercadante’s opera, “if Dante hadn’t immortalized her Read More …
When I saw this house, my first thought was: “I’m glad I don’t have to pay their heating bills.” Perhaps that is why the “Private Museum” in the Heidi Weber House was only open during the summer months, if at all, because it would have been too expensive to heat. Read More …
The composer Kurt Weill (1900-1950) was born in Dessau as the son of a Jewish Kantor. He is best known in Germany for The Three Penny Opera (1928) and The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1930) — both to texts by German dramatist and poet Bertolt Brecht Read More …