Sixty-nine opera houses in Germany
Up to now I have seen performances in sixty-nine German opera houses, and I hope to get around to the other seventeen in the next few years, before their funding Read More ...
The House of Balzac
Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850), author of the many books comprising La Comédie Humaine, lived in this house in Passy for seven years in the 1840s. He did not own the Read More ...
Why the Dutch don’t wear bicycle helmets
For a conscientious helmet-wearer like me, it was shocking to see that hardly anybody in Amsterdam wears a bicycle helmet, not even the children. After asking around a bit, I learned Read More ...
May you be struck by lightning!
The Church of San Michele Arcangelo (Saint Michael the Archangel) was and is just a few steps away from Verdi’s birth house. This plaque recounts the story of how Verdi’s Read More ...
Verdi’s Troubadour in Bregenz
Here on the shore of Lake Constance (Bodensee) at Bregenz, Austria, is the open-air opera venue where the Bregenz Festival is held every summer. On the grandstand there are 6800 Read More ...
Verdi’s Troubadour in the opera tent
The Kuppeltheater (‘dome theater’) was originally built in Freiburg, where it was used for two years while their theater was being renovated. Then it was taken down and moved to Read More ...
Victor Hugo in Bacharach
In 1840 the great French novelist Victor Hugo, author of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and later Les Misérables, spent three days in Bacharach and wrote an enthusiastic description in his book Read More ...
In the footsteps (or wagon ruts) of Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo’s first visit to Liège was in 1840, when he was thirty-eight years old. He was travelling by stagecoach, known in French as a diligence, and was on his Read More ...
Einstein lived here (and so did I)
In February 1902 Albert Einstein wrote to his fiancée Mileva Maric: “It’s delightful here in Bern. An ancient, exquisitely cozy city, in which one can live exactly as in Zurich. Read More ...
About me
Hello, my name’s Don. I’m an American living in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, where I teach, ride a bicycle and go to the opera. I became an opera fan at Read More ...
Frankfurt OperaTalk
If you speak English, live in or near Frankfurt and are interested in opera, be sure to sign up for Germany’s only English-language opera appreciation course, Frankfurt OperaTalk, at the Read More ...
Opern-Gespräche
Seit 1999 leite ich einen Kurs namens „Opern-Gespräche“ an der Volkshochschule Frankfurt. In diesem Kurs reden wir (nicht nur ich!) mit fachkundigen Gästen aus dem Opernbetrieb über das reichhaltige Frankfurter Read More ...