Despite the similarity of their names (Verdi means greens and Monteverdi means green mountain), the opera composers Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) and Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) were not related to each other. Since Monteverdi was born 256 years earlier, he could have been Verdi’s great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, but he wasn’t. Geographically, however, they were Read More …
The big open-air opera production at the St Gallen Festival in 2022 was supposed to have been Orleanskaja dewa (The Maid of Orleans) by the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893). But then, (as the general director of the St Gallen Theater explained it in the German opera magazine Das Read More …
The Luzerner Theater is on the left bank of the Reuss River, at the lower end of Lake Lucerne (Vierwaldstättersee in German). The theater dates from 1839, and now describes itself as “the oldest multi-genre venue in Central Switzerland” and as “one of the largest cultural institutions, offering a variety Read More …
You can take a tour of the Bregenz Festival grounds at 10:30, 11:30, 12:30, 13:30, 14:30 or 15:30 any day during the five-week festival season. The cost (as of 2022) is € 7.50 per person and usually includes the inside of the festival building, the grandstand, and of course the big stage Read More …
From the outside, the Hannover Opera House still (or again) looks much the same as it did when it first opened as the Royal Court Theatre (Königliches Hoftheater) on September 1, 1852. In July 1943 the inside of the theater was destroyed fire bombs in one of the many bombing Read More …
Hippophagy, meaning the eating of horse meat, wasn’t even legal in France until 1866, although there was a black market for horse meat long before that, especially in times of crisis. According to the French historian Sylvain Leteux, horse meat lost its taboo status and became a popular food in France Read More …
In 2005, I took a Regional Express train from Frankfurt to Fulda, and then started cycling along the regional bicycle route R1 down the Fulda River Valley. It was a cool, overcast day, which was fine for cycling but not ideal for taking pictures. I arrived two years too late Read More …
The State Opera in Prague (Státní Opera Praha) has the most dreadful location of any opera house I can think of. The front entrance is cut off from the city by a high-speed four-lane motorway called Wilsonova with no pedestrian crossing, just a dark narrow tunnel that looks like the Read More …
The German dramatist, poet and historian Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) spent the summer of 1785 in a farmhouse in what was then the village of Gohlis, near Leipzig. At that time, Schiller presumably had a better view from his bedroom window than I did when I visited in 2005. Of course Read More …
>> Frankfurt Skyline Countdown # 3 << Frankfurt’s third tallest building (208 meters, 53 floors) is named after its address, Westendstraße 1. Actually, the main entrance is around the corner at Mainzer Landstrasse 58, near Platz der Republik. The building was completed in 1993. This is part of Read More …