Berlin is the only German city that has three full-scale professional opera houses. This one is called the Komische Oper or ‘Comic Opera’, but that doesn’t mean everything they do is hilariously funny. The name Komische Oper was originally meant to suggest that this opera house (like the Opera Comique in Read More …
During his long career, Giuseppe Verdi composed twenty-six operas — or twenty-eight, depending what you count as what. The following list is the 28-opera version, with the year of the world premiere in parentheses after each title. I have listed the opera titles in different colors: Red means I have Read More …
On the Schillerplatz in the center of Stuttgart there is an exhibition of historical musical instruments. While this collection is not as large as the ones in Brussels, Berlin, Nürnberg or Paris, it is still well worth seeing and has interesting explanations of why certain Baroque instruments went out of fashion, Read More …
One thing I’ll say for the Lyon opera house: you can’t mistake it for any other building in Lyon, or for any other opera house in the world that I know of. Or do you know of any other building that has a nineteenth century façade topped by a huge Read More …
Jeunesses Musicales presented the opera La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) in an open-air production in the courtyard of Weikersheim Palace on nine evenings in July 2005. These biennial opera productions, in the odd-numbered years, are almost always chosen from the world’s twenty or so most popular operas. La Traviata Read More …
One of William Shakespeare’s biggest fans in the 19th century was the great Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901), who based three of his operas on Shakespeare plays, namely Macbeth, Otello and Falstaff. The composer’s second favorite author was the 18th century German playwright Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805), whom Verdi admired not Read More …
At first glance, the Konstabler Wache in downtown Frankfurt might seem like an unpromising venue for an open-air opera performance. This is one of the least distinguished public squares in Europe, if not the world, and is bounded on one side by a busy street with bus, tram and automobile Read More …
This invigorating Flemish city is called Gent in Dutch, Ghent in English, Gand in French and Gante in Spanish. The Spanish ruled Flanders for many years, which is why they have their own names for some of the cities. The Spanish King Charles V in fact was born in Gante Read More …
My recent visit to Weimar was ‘between the years’, as the Germans would say (meaning in the week between Christmas and New Year’s), so the square in front of the German National Theater (Deutsches Nationaltheater = DNT) was filled with an ice-skating rink and some remaining stands from the Christmas Read More …
When I took this photo on a sunny spring morning I was trying to get La Scala from the same angle as in a famous painting by Angelo Inganni from the year 1852. At that time the opera house was in a narrow street because the square, Piazza della Scala, Read More …