Cangrande’s refuge
Castelvecchio, the Old Castle, was built by the Scala family during the 14th century when they were the rulers of Verona. It became their residence and fortress during the rule Read More …
Tag: Strauss
Operas in Stuttgart
The State Opera in Stuttgart has a great reputation for high quality, innovative opera productions. I have seen quite a few operas in Stuttgart, including L’italiana in Algeri (The Italian Read More …
Opera in Saarbrücken
Saarbrücken is the capital of the Saarland and is located on the Saar River near the French border. After the First and Second World Wars this area came under French Read More …
A new home for the Huguenots
The town of Friedrichsdorf (= “Friedrich’s village”), Germany, was founded in 1687 by Huguenots, French Protestants who had fled to escape religious prosecution in France. They were invited to settle Read More …
Allegorical statues
For the large formal gardens behind his palace at Versailles, King Louis XIV commissioned dozens of white marble statues showing healthy young women with good posture, many of them dressed Read More …
Lully and Strauss in Nancy
The opera house in Nancy is on an elegant public square called Place Stanislas, which was designed and built in the 1750s on orders of the Duke of Lorraine, Stanislas Read More …
Salomé in the opera tent
The Théâtre Royal de Liège, home of the Royal Opera of the Wallonia, was closed for several years to be reconstructed and enlarged. When I was there in 2011, I Read More …
Standing room at the Opéra Bastille
In September 2011 I paid all of five Euros and got the next-to-last standing room ticket for the premiere of the opera Salomé by Richard Strauss (1864-1949). This was the Read More …
Guided tour of the Salzburg Festival Halls
The Salzburg Festival is one of the world’s largest and most intensive summer music and drama festivals, with more than two hundred performances packed into six weeks in July and Read More …