The Redemption of the Damned for $12.95 I am so happy to announce that finally someone has reviewed my second volume of The Goldberg Variations: The Redemption of the Damned. In many ways this book is my most daring and innovative work to date. And the review is as lyrical as it is insightful, I…
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Fringe 14: Opera and Horror
It is now Tuesday 2 days before we leave. We started the day with our morning coffee. We went to a coffee place called the rooster, and indeed I found a rooster painted in chocolate ontop of my cappuccino. Then onwards for a tour of Edinburgh Castle and afterwards we were hosted to a high…
Fringe Day 13: Erricone to Gilbert and Sullivan
Today’s Fringe festival was a low-key day. It started with a lazy morning and then going to a lunchtime concert at St. Mary’s Cathedral. It featured a youthful all-female ensemble called, the Soteria Piano Trio. They played a varied program. The first half was modern music, but not atonal at all. The core of the…
Saturday Queer Stories and Opera
Saturday, we had two shows but they were in the late afternoon and then late evening. So we started the day out going to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Gallery Number Two (yes that’s it’s name). It had a nice but simple collection: a single Monet, 2 Picasso’s, 1 Leger, and a smattering…
Simply delicious” Spaghetti with Clams
I have noticed that the so-called great cooking experts are creating a violence against decent cooking that actually is surprisingly simple. They will add complexity for its own sake, add surprising taste sensations when none are needed. Among the unnecessary ingredients I have found are lemon juice, white wine, bottarga, various herbs and extraneous spices.…
Bagels in Italy
What do you do on a snowy day in Bologna? Today it started to rain but ended up snowing—very nicely. But I came across an interesting bagel recipe. It seemed simple enough to make the dough. Once the dough was made I could ignore the rest of the instructions as I knew better how to…
La Famiglia Sagre I: Porcini!
Sagre is an Italian word for a festival. It is a kind of cross between a low-brow foodie event and something like a state fair. Like the Gilroy Garlic Festival, a Sagre has a single theme. The theme is a celebration of some type of famous local cuisine. They have Sagre’s for almost every type…
Piccolo Corpo: an intimate film of epic proportions
There is an amazing film that is so powerful that watching it is one of those events you can’t get out of your mind hours or days after seeing it. The film, Piccolo Corpo (Little Body) by debut director Laura Samani is an almost virtuoso display of the all too human struggle of women in…
Bologna Cinema Ritrovato Film Festival
I was in Sardinia with Claudia, Mackenson and Christina, to escape the heat. It was only a matter of time until I had to go home. It was almost arbitrary when I would come back. First because in Bologna it will be in the mid-thirties (celsius) for the next 2 months, as far as I…
The Unesco City of Music
I choose to live in Bologna for, among other things, its cultural life. Especially music. And I was not prepared for 3 of the best orchestras I don’t think you’ll ever hear of. I’ve already been to a mediocre performance of Ariadne auf Naxos with an unprofessional soprano who spoke more than she could sing,…