Blog for One

We are both off on a 5 day jaunt to Prague with our niece. Planning to see Don Giovanni at the Estates Theater in Prague on the occasion of Mozart’s 250th birthday celebrations. I’ll be taking lots of pictures, as apparently this is mecca for Mozart lovers. This is where Don Giovanni had its world premiere in 1787.

Looking forward to the sights and sounds, even if it is still wintery weather.

From the Washington Post, an interesting article on the brouhaha arising from newspaper caricatures.

The article provides some thought-proking commentary on the 12 caricatures appearing in a Danish newspaper.
On sacrilege:
…We may cluck about the lack of freedom in Iran, but we have grown very orthodox about the way we speak of religion in our own public square. The curious thing about sacrilege is that it very often strengthens true religion as much as it reaffirms the right to challenge it.
The closing paragraph proposes an interesting theory.
So perhaps these cartoons really do crystallize why Islam and the West are incompatible and must hunker down for a “long war.” The only other option, it seems, is to remember that if vastly different worldviews can find no accommodation on a subject, then perhaps it’s too early, in human history, to have the conversation.

Interesting in that it reminds me of old Star Trek episodes where the crew lands on a “primitive civilization”. How odd to find that this primitive civilization is, indeed, all of us.

According to this article on Channelnewsasia.com, Antonio Salieri’s music is making a return to the stage.

“The vast refurbishment of Milan’s La Scala opera house will be disclosed Tuesday with the appropriately named work — “Europe Revealed” — with which the house was inaugurated 226 years ago.

“Europe Revealed,” or “Europa Riconosciuta,” is by Antonio Salieri, then court composer in Vienna, the capital of the empire of which Milan formed part and in modern times the villain of Peter Schaeffer’s fantasia about the life and death of Mozart, “Amadeus”. Salieri’s music is now rarely performed and “Europe Revealed” had been dropped completely from La Scala’s repertoire.

Also according to the article, “The reopening is the occasion for a series of special events and exhibitions, including one on the rather thin relationship between Mozart and Salieri, the man much maligned as his killer. ”

I thought that was just in the movie.

From FLOG

In Bavaria, public farting is A-OK.

“…While strolling through a town square so freakin’ quaint it would make anybody’s grandmother moist, Spc. Mike laid an enormous fart just as a clutch of elderly Bavarian fraus walked past. It was the kind of fart that had a theme and variations; hell, it had several movements. It was the sort of fart that made it loud and clear that the fartier would soon have to induce vomiting, because he had far more numerous and varied meats sloshing around his beer-blasted stomach than a non-Bavarian should attempt. Truly A-1 material.

The old fraus gasped a bit and shook their heads, clucking “nein, nein, nein” at us. We expected an unintelligible public shaming. Instead, one of them cut loose with three melodic toots of her own — “fwoot fwoot fwooooot” right out the back end of a traditional Bavarian dress. Un. Freakin. Believable. We laughed hard, but in truth we were humbled. Bavaria is truly the match for any High Life Man.”