By day Donna Leon writes detective novels – 12 so far – and succesful thrillers at that. Successful enough, anyway, to fund her true passion, running a baroque opera company. By night she runs an opera company, largely funded from her life of crime. Not many of her readers know this, but it won’t surprise them. Opera seeps into her books – their plots, their atmosphere – like dripping blood. Each one comes prefaced by a few lines of Mozartian libretto – usually from Cosi fan tutte, which for some reason seems to lend itself to the mechanics of murder-mystery even though it’s an opera in which no one actually dies.”
Tag: 03.27.03
Covent Garden To Stage Its First Musical
London’s Royal Opera House, out to prove it is more populist than in the past, has scheduled its first musical for the main stage: Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. Music director Antonio Pappano “said he wanted to open the windows … ‘I am not interested in this old argument about what is opera and what is musical theatre. Often it’s so intense and serious here, but it is OK for this opera house to have fun too’.”
Is Saddam Holding Historical Treasures Hostage?
“Millennia ago, Iraq was the cradle of civilization, hence the concern about its cultural and archaeological sites. Is the U.S. taking sufficient care to spare Iraq’s treasures? The laws of warfare make clear that while combatants may not target such sites, if they are used for military purposes they lose their protection.” Unfortunately, say US commanders, the Iraqis have are putting military targets next to important archaeological sites. Recently Iraq “placed military equipment and communications equipment next to the 2,000-year-old brick arch of Ctesiphon on the banks of the Tigris River, the world’s largest surviving arch from ancient times and the widest single-span arch in the world.”