This beautiful old theater dates from 1874 and is still very much in operation despite the recent openings of the new opera house, the new concert hall and the new Royal Danish Playhouse. The Danish name for The Old Stage is Gamle Scene, a name which provokes giggles among German Read More …
This large cemetery in the 20th arrondissement of Paris is popular with tourists because some famous people are buried here. If you go in at the main entrance you can get a map to help you find the graves of people like Gioacchino Rossini, Maria Callas, Édith Piaf, Jim Morrison Read More …
One of the mysteries of operatic history is why the composer Gioacchino Rossini (1792 – 1868) abruptly stopped composing in 1829 at the age of 37, when he was at the height of his powers and had just had a huge success with his opera Wilhelm Tell. Since he was Read More …
The one thing I really messed up on my visit to Milan in 2008 was that I didn’t see the exhibition Ricordi e i Fantastici 5 — and why not? Because I didn’t notice the little sticker saying it had been extended, so I thought it was all over before Read More …
Since it was the middle of February I was prepared for snow, slush, sleet, gale-force winds and freezing temperatures, but in fact it was dry and frost-free the entire time, and on my last day we had brilliant sunshine and temperature readings from 17° C. at noon up to 20° Read More …
Besides the Bavarian State Opera, Munich also has a second full-scale opera house called the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz. They do all their operas in German (or Bavarian!), not in the original languages, and also put on the occasional operetta or musical. Gärtnerplatz is one of the few opera houses which Read More …
The two department stores Au Printemps and the Galeries Lafayette are both on the same street, Boulevard Haussmann. They are both in large historic buildings with Art Deco cupolas. And they both sell the same fashionable products with prestigious brand names that everybody except me has heard of. It turns Read More …
In 1958 the city of Essen conducted an architects’ competition to design a modern new opera house. The winner was the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto (1898-1976). Of course just winning a competition is no guarantee that your design will actually be built. The German cities of Leipzig and Kassel both Read More …
Charles the 10th reigned as King of France from 1824 to 1830. To celebrate his coronation at the Reims Cathedral, he commissioned the great Italian composer Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868) to compose an opera for the occasion. What Rossini came up with was a light-hearted, irreverent (but not unfriendly) comic opera Read More …
My original intention was to ride around Paris on the Vélib’ bikes during the day and just come out to Versailles for the evening performance at the Royal Opera, but it turned out to be such a rainy day that all my Paris plans ‘fell into the water’, as the Read More …