Holidays Greetings

Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas! Joyeux Noël! Frohe Weihnachten! Честита Коледа! Schöni Fäschttäg! Buon Natale! Feliz Navidad!

Best of wishes to everyone for a safe and happy end to 2012 and a marvelous and healthy 2013!

For my fellow fans of one Vesselina Kasarova, the amazing Bulgarian operatic mezzo soprano, here is a little year end treat.

I don't know why this recording of Handel's Ariodante from the Liceu in Barcelona in 2006 hasn't been made commercially available yet. But here is a bit of it to give your holiday a dramatic stir.

Musing: Where Have All The Flowers Gone (or something like that)?

This shot was taken in spring, when the wild flowers were blooming all over town.

Those wild flowers are gone now, of course, though I wonder if the pavement still remembers the beautiful colorful little bee charmers that used to cast shadow on them early and late in the days.

Why would anyone want to live forever? It might be okay if one has really short memory and forgets everything soon enough that things always seem new and exciting. Somehow I doubt that that is part of the much longed for concept, though. People want to live long and remember everything. Something like a retentive slab of pavement. I suppose I'm odd in that I'd rather be the flighty wild flower. Long life is too boring for me. 

Friday the 14th...

It's shaping up to be a rather horrible day... much less for me than for the parents and loved ones of those little kids and their teachers massacred by another gun toting youngster in yet another American school.


Not just another American school... Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, CT. 

Something to look forward to: Christiane Karg - Amoretti

Christiane Karg, the wonderful young German soprano, has a new CD out:


Mozart, Gluck & Gretry... How cool is that! Not only do I get to hear her sing some more, but I also get to hear rarely heard music from the period I really dig, too! A nice continuation from my first experience of her in the Salzburg Festival DVD of Mozart's Apollo et Hyacinthus.

That's another awesome bit of music that's not performed anywhere nearly as often enough at all... 

And to add icing on the cake, she actually granted me a cyber interview a few years ago.

Where is Smorg? (2)

I know, I know, there are many lakes around the city. But which lake features a local version of a Potemkin village on its south shore?