Tropea – taking it easy in Calabria
This was in June 2022, my first foreign trip after Covid decided to keep us all home for a couple of years. I had been going on holiday to Italy annually for ten years. I love the place, the culture…
Tag Enrico Caruso
Pompeii lives on after the destruction
I spent a week in Naples in January 2020, and on a sunny winter’s day, I took the train to Pompeii, the ancient Roman city that was destroyed by a cataclysmic eruption of the volcanic mountain of Vesuvius in AD…
Going to Naples and Sorrento – on an Italian opera trail.
In September 2017, when I was looking at Mount Vesuvius from Sorrento, across the Bay of Naples, I thought of Pliny the Younger (born 61 AD), as you do, who wrote a detailed description of the catastrophic eruption of the…
El Cid or Le Cid – you’re not a hero until they turn you into a play, an opera and a Hollywood movie.
Roberto Alagna as Marseilles’ operatic Le Cid, 2011 I might’ve done it anyway but during this enforced time of relaxation due to my illness, I have been catching up on less well-known French operas on that wonderful modern treasure-chest, Youtube.…
Enrico Caruso – the voice of my childhood.
Enrico Caruso (1873-1921) I know Enrico Caruso has been dead for 90 years but he is the voice of my childhood. His was the first Italian tenor that I heard – in recordings I made from the radio – and…