I was visiting friends and family, sledding with the little ones in Winter Wonderland on the few hills in famously flat Berlin (entrance at Hasenheide was not easy) and visiting the Berlinale. Without accreditation it wasn’t easy to get tickets to the films of my choice. As soon as the...
A visit to Dessau inspired the improvements of the park and grounds at Weimar, which now make it so attractive. The close of 1779 was occupied by a winter journey to Switzerland, undertaken with the duke and a small retinue. Two days were spent at Frankfort [Frankfurt] with Goethe’s pare...
To this period also belongs his one opera,Fidelio,commissionedfor the winter season of 1805. The play concerns a wife who disguises herself as a boy in order to rescue her husband, imprisoned for political reasons; in setting this tomusic, Beethoven was influenced byFerdinando Paerand byLuigi ...