Category Archive: OPERA
“Leitmotifs Through the Aether”
A Tribschen idyll...Wagner with Eva
May 22, Happy 203rd birthday to Maestro Richard Wagner! On the evening of 19 May 2016, the Richard Wagner Society of SA hosted ABC broadcaster and programmer Simon Healy to give the annual Brian Coghlan Lecture on Leitmotifs Through the Aether:Wagner’s Operas in Broadcasting History. In a highly detailed and fascinating talk, Simon spoke (in his classic, Classic FM voice) of the technological advances through the last couple of centuries, referring first to the ancients and their perception of the ‘aether’ as the fifth element, onward and upward to the telegraph, which really paved the way for mass communication since….
Continue Reading →Napoleon III For Me
'Joyeux 208e anniversaire, mon Roi' (Napoleon III by Franz Xaver Winterhalter)
Happy 208th birthday, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte! He was a true Frenchman – his instincts on things that matter (except the defence of the Empire) were sound. For example, he stood up for the artists against the salon. Modern governments bleat about public infrastructure – he just did it. Perhaps major infrastructure can’t be built anymore without an emperor. He also appointed an infrastructure guru, M. Haussmann, to rebuild Paris, which, overall, he did brilliantly. He was a fan of the arts! So what if he didn’t see the Prussians coming! He was a fan of the arts! He oversaw Paris’ Palais Garnier,…
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