The third opera I saw at the State Opera in Vienna back in 2016 was Don Pasquale, a comic opera by Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848). This is an opera I have often seen before, but I never get tired of it — it’s so beautiful and funny. I think men of Read More …
In May 1940, my relatives had a few hours in Salt Lake City between trains. They had come from Denver via the Royal Gorge on the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad (often shortened to ‘the Rio Grande’) and would leave the same day on the Western Pacific, on an Read More …
The bookshop La vie du rail has moved. For many years, it was in a tiny shop in an obscure corner of a major Paris railway station, Gare Saint-Lazare, as shown here in my photos from ten years ago. But since my last visit, the bookshop seems to have moved Read More …
This large mural in the entrance hall of the Gare de l’Est (East Station) in Paris shows soldiers in August 1914 saying goodbye to their families and boarding a train to go into battle at the beginning of the First World War. The mural was painted in 1926 by an Read More …
No, I did not travel to the Royal Gorge in 1940. But my parents did, along with my maternal grandparents and my American aunts and uncles. This was no doubt my grandfather’s idea, to have a train trip to the Royal Gorge, Yosemite and San Francisco (for the World’s Fair) Read More …
Georg Friedrich Händel (1685-1759) was born and grew up in Halle, Germany. At age 18, he moved to Hamburg, where he got a job playing several instruments in the opera orchestra. When he was 21, he went to Italy, where he spent over three years composing, performing in concerts and Read More …
In January 2023, the Frankfurt Opera mounted a new production of Orlando (HWV 31) by Georg Friedrich Händel (1685-1759). Orlando is one of three Händel operas based on episodes from Ludovico Ariosto’s verse epic Orlando furioso, the other two being Ariodante and Alcina. Ariosto’s long poem was first published in Read More …
Here the soloists, chorus members and conductor at the Frankfurt Opera are taking their bows at the end of a staged performance of Hercules, by Georg Friedrich Händel, in 2023. (That’s a statue of Hercules in the background.) In the HWV-catalogue of Händel’s works (HWV = Händel-Werke-Verzeichnis in German), Hercules has the number HWV Read More …
These people are waiting to enter the St. Marien-Kirche (Saint Mary’s Church) in Göttingen, Germany, to attend a choral concert by the Athens Chamber Choir. The orange truck on the right is a sound truck from the North German Radio (NDR), a public radio station that recorded the concert for Read More …
Semele by Georg Friedrich Händel (1685-1759) was the featured Festival Opera, fully staged, at the Göttingen International Händel Festival in 2023 — even though by the composer’s definition it was not an opera at all, but rather just a “Story” told “after the Manner of an Oratorio.” The text of Read More …