Germany’s newest opera house is located in Erfurt, the capital city of Thüringen. This is the only new opera house to have been built in Germany so far in the 21st century. (The last one in the 20th century was the one in Kaiserslautern that was completed in 1995, unless you Read More …
The Grand Duchy of Oldenburg ceased to exist in 1918, at the end of the First World War, when the last reigning grand duke, Frederick Augustus II, was forced to abdicate, along with all the other dukes, grand dukes, counts, margraves, landgraves, princes and even kings who up to then Read More …
This is the main railway station in Oldenburg (Oldb) — not to be confused with Oldenburg (Holst), which is a smaller place in Holstein, on the way to Puttgarten, Rødbyhavn and Copenhagen. The reason for the “(Oldb)” in the name of this Oldenburg is that for centuries it was the Read More …
The composer Jacques Offenbach was born in 1819, so 2019 was his bicentenary. This cartoon by the front entrance of the Lausanne opera house shows him saying “200 years, already…?” and thinking “At the Opera of Lausanne.” For the bicentenary, the Lausanne Opera presented two of Offenbach’s operas, Tales of Read More …
The Théâtre du Gymnase Marie Bell is one of the many theaters on the grands boulevards in Paris — and no doubt one of the oldest, having been built in the early 19th century and inaugurated in 1820. From the outside it doesn’t show its age, particularly, but inside it Read More …
Meiningen is a small city in southern Thüringen which advertises itself as “The Theater City.” It has an impressive theater building with six Corinthian columns, dating from the year 1909, and a unique theater tradition going back to the middle of the 19th century. From 1866 to 1914 Meiningen was Read More …
The thoroughly renovated Magdeburg Opera House is where they put on a full program of operas, operettas, musicals, ballets and concerts — everything except spoken drama, because for that they now have a separate theater building a short distance away. In 2005 I happened to be in Magdeburg for their Read More …
Greiz is a town of 22,548 people (down four thousand since my visit) in the Elster Valley 33 kilometers south of Gera. (My lead photo shows Greiz at 7:00 a.m.) When I was asked to conduct a teachers’ workshop in Greiz I first had to look at the map to Read More …
My first visit to Rostock was just five days after the opening of the Berlin Wall, as I have described in my post Rostock 1989. My second visit was a very brief business trip in 1998. My third visit was in January 2009. This was also a business trip, but Read More …
The composer Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) is best known today for his one serious opera, Tales of Hoffmann, which he composed shortly before his death, based on the life and writings of the German author and composer E.T.A. Hoffmann. But actually Tales of Hoffmann was only one of 102 works for Read More …