The Bavarian State Opera (Bayerische Staatsoper), in the National Theater in Munich, is one of the best places in Germany to see big-name opera stars. This is the only place I have ever seen Edita Gruberova in a live opera performance. Or Vesselina Kasarova. Or Bryn Terfel. Or Angelika Kirchschlager. Read More …
The Bad Hersfeld Festival is held in the Stiftsruine (abbey ruins), the remains of a large church that was originally built between 831 and 850. This church was part of a Catholic monastery for the first several centuries of its existence, but on May 1, 1521, Martin Luther came to Read More …
This is an historic theater that was inaugurated in 1783 with a performance of the play Emilia Galotti (in German) by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781). But the truly historic thing happened here just five years later in 1787 when the world’s greatest composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) conducted the world premiere Read More …
This barn-like structure in the Frankfurt district of Bockenheim, near the old university campus, served for many decades as a depot for streetcars. I can remember when the whole place was full of tracks, and they drove the streetcars in at night when they weren’t being used. Now the tracks Read More …
The Fuggerei claims to be the world’s oldest social housing area. It was founded in 1521 by the wealthy Augsburg merchant Jakob Fugger (1459-1525) to provide housing for industrious Catholic residents of Augsburg who had become impoverished through no fault of their own. The complex consists of 67 buildings with Read More …
Barfuß means barefoot in German, but that doesn’t mean you have to take off your shoes and socks before entering the Protestant Barfüßlerkirche in Augsburg. Nor does it mean you can buy shoes here, even though some younger Germans know Barfüßler mainly as a chain of shoe stores. What it Read More …
A characteristic feature of Augsburg is the existence of two churches side by side with the same name, a fancy white one for the Catholics and a more austere yellow-brown one for the Protestants. In another part of town there are also two St. Ulrich’s churches, in the same colors. Read More …
It only rained once during the ten days I was in Paris in June 2006, and that was — you guessed it — ten minutes before show time at an open-air opera performance in the Senate Gardens, which are in the Luxembourg Gardens right behind Luxembourg Palace. A nice announcer Read More …
Augsburg was the birthplace of Leopold Mozart (1719-1787). He was a composer and musician in his own right, and also the author of what was then a standard textbook on learning to play the violin. But of course he is most famous as the father, teacher, manager and slave-driver of Read More …
This theater is not on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, as I used to think, but is several blocks from there on Avenue Montaigne near the Place de l’Alma on the right bank of the Seine. This is a very wealthy district of Paris, in fact for apartment buyers Avenue Montaigne Read More …