-=- Intense Melody -=-

Japan’s first opera house (Bunka Kaikan in Tokyo) is sold out with some tickets as high as 500 euros for the 97th Vienna State opera’s Japanese performance. The 100th performance will be celebrated with Fidelio conducted by Seiji Ozawa. Next to the Austrian flag in the foyer hangs an enormous photo of the Vienna State [...]

No my blog isn’t becoming political all of a sudden.  But this article struck a chord.
“I talk a bit too much about politics, right?” – No, of course not. But it’s a bit unusual, on the occasion of an operetta premier interview, more than half of the time to talk about politics. “Yeah I am [...]

Every season the Wiener Staatsoper (Vienna State Opera) house changes its stage curtain to a new abstract artistic rendition.
When I first moved here in 2006 we had a curtain designed by the Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija with the saying “Angst essen Seele auf” (“Fear eats away at the soul”) over the familiar television SMPTE [...]

I received the following strange email a day ago:
Mr. Apostolov
BRAVISSIMO
Your voice is magnificent. You are realy a great and wonderful singer. I´m your fan. and.I would like to get an autographed photo from you and i will be very gratefull if you send me one. My postal adress is:
Ricardo Correia
AV. DO ULTRAMAR
18 – 3º – [...]

It all started when my Italian girlfriend introduced me to “La Bella Figura – A Field Guide to the Italian Mind” by Beppe Severgnini. A comical book written by an Italian journalist who’s lived outside of Italy long enough to view his own people from an outsider’s perspective, and explain the differences. Such as, why [...]

Talk about maximizing real estate! Notice the store window at sidewalk level? Stores like these are scattered around Eastern Europe. These two example photos were taken in Sofia, Bulgaria. I have to say it feels a bit odd to crane your neck and bow down to see the salesperson. In fact it is common to [...]

You are in a public bathroom at a restaurant and you reach over to pull thepublic toilet prominently displayed cord to flush the toilet. The toilet doesn’t flush; instead sirens go off in the restaurant! Then you see the real flushing mechanism is not the emergency help cord you just pulled but the small white [...]

Vienna is an amazingly clean city for its size of nearly 2 million people. However, it does have a problem with dog piles. Coming from NYC, I’m used to seeing threatening signs of clean after your dog or else a hefty fine. Here they went a different route. Vienna installed posts recently with the above [...]