Hello loves! I just have to post this german documentary (in two parts) about Drottningholm that i just found on youtube. I can't stand how time just evaporates like this - i haven't made it to Drottningholm since i was there for Handel's Ariodante in the beginning of june, and i used to go there at least once a week! -but of course it's been a terrible start of this summer -after a lovely spring most of june just rained away and the temperature stayed around 13 Celsius...but now we've had several days of almost tropical heat with temperatures never sinking below 20 degrees even at night. So i hope to go soon! -and i really could be there within 30 minutes so i don't know what keeps keeping me!
1,
2,
Last week i was in Berlin for a couple of days, visiting my friend, who's currently doing an internship at an architecture firm there.
This was my first time abroad since my mother passed away in 2005 and god, i needed a holiday! My friend lives in Kreutzberg in the most beautiful apartment in a 19th century building with stucco ceilings and no less than three beautiful tiled stoves!
On the third day we got tickets for Mozart's "the abduction of the seraglio" at the Staatsoper Unter den linden, it was just third row seats and we scarcely saw the stage, but it was a great performance, with Christine Schäfer as Costanze, who also sings the part on the recording with William Christie. Annoyingly we didn't get to see her when she gloriously sang "Marter aller arten", so the operaglasses i found in a little antiques shop in our neighborhood earlier the same day weren't much use, but we heard perfectly: Unter den linden towards Alexanderplatz with the Staatsoper to the right.
One of my favorite things about Berlin is Dussmann -a huge and fabulous store on Friedrichstraße, open until midnight on weekdays, selling books, music, movies, games and more. -they have the most incredible classical section! Too good to be true! I bought Mondonville's "Titon et Aurore" and Mouret's "Les amours de Ragonde" (Erato/Warner) both with Marc Minkowski and a lovely new cd titled "Le salon de musique de Marie-Antoinette" (Naïve/Ambroisie" with Sandrine Chatron on Harp, playing beautiful pieces by Gluck, Grétry, Mozart and others including Marie-Antoinette's own composition "C'est mon ami" and other arias and duets sung by Isabelle Poulenard and Jean-François Lombard, and then to my pleasant surprise i found a sequal to Véronique Gens and Les Talens Lyriques with Christophe Rousset, terrific 2006 recital cd "Tragédiennes" (Emi/Virgin) simply titled "Tragédiennes 2".
The first one had music by Lully, Campra, Rameau, Mondonville, Leclair, Royer and Gluck and the second one Gluck, Sacchini, Piccinni, Rameau, Grétry, Cherubini, Arriàga and Berlioz. I also picked up Lully's "Atys" (Harmonia Mundi) with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants.
the view from the tv-tower
The classical section at Dussmann truly is fantastic, i discovered it the last time i was in Berlin in 2004 and i was like a kid in a candystore! They have absolutely everything! -and i was pleased to see nothing had changed in five years, what with all those superstores closing and downsizing allover the world. I also made it twice to my favorite eatery, Monsieur Vuong where i had delicious springrolls, noodlesalad Mekong and Phò. How i love that place...just like the rest of the world! Sadly i did not make it to Potsdam and Sanssouci or to revisit the Charlottenburg palace...but they're excellent reasons to go back to that lovely city.
The Sophienkirche in Mitte, a gorgeous little church
Again, i apologise for not being more active here but time has just been slipping through my fingers lately. But i'm pleased to see you're still with me. See you soon!
Yesterday I and my friend P went out to Skokloster castle, where her boyfriend, who's studying to become a director at the Dramatic Institute, was shooting a scene for his thesis-film, and to wich i have drawn the storyboards. The film is set in 1713 and tells, in short, the nightmarish story about the downfall of Count Magnus Stenbock, a nobleman and general under King Charles XII. But i shall write a little about the castle, for those not already familiar with it. It is one of my favorite places, and a major tourist attraction, and has been since the early 1700s. Northwest of Stockholm, Beautifully situated by Lake Mälaren lies one of. it not THE most well preserved baroque castle in the entire world. It's construction began in 1654, as a display of the power and wealth of Count Carl Gustaf Wrangel, however construction took a halt upon his death in 1676. Probably one of the most interesting rooms is the huge, unfinished banqueting hall and a suite of adjoining guestrooms, standing just as the workers left them, tools and all, just as they stand today. The castle is a marvelous treasuretrove with more than 50.000 objects from some of the wealthiest and most powerful noble families in sweden. The room depicted above and below is a royal guestroom. The gilt leather wall hangings are 17th century but weren't put up until 1837 wich is why they've retained much of their colour - Skokloster has one of the biggest collections of gilt leather in the world, in eight rooms and alltogether around 550 square metres of it. The room has an exquisite collection of chinese inspired furniture from around 17th to 19th century. Some of the chairs were made in Paris around 1780 and later copies were made. The canopy-bed dates from around 1700. The room used for the film is the so called Brahe dining room where a scene between Stenbock and the king was filmed, and to my horror some of the extras cas as courtiers were wearing the most excruciatingly bad costumes! Not only were they the wrong period but in the worst cuts and fabrics you can imagine, not to mention the hair. I wish i had known and i would have put a stop to it, but too late to say anything at this point, it is just a school production after all, but i do hope they won't show too much!
...i'm pleased to see that you are still with me in spite of my long absence. I have been feeling low and uninsipired lately and still can't think of what to write, but i hope to be back soom and hope that you stay with me until i come round again. Thank you, sweethearts.
I've always adored and lusted for Camellias but never had one. While my mother was alive she always discouraged me. And now i see why. -almost all of it's buds fell off within days, and it has only been able to procure one blossom, lord knows if the remaining buds will fall off as well...i might just have to move to Cornwall.
At last i've gotten that slight, proper snow mayhem i have pined for for so long! I only hope it stays a while before spring breaks out. Last saturday saw a feeble dusting of snow and during the night it snowed as though someone had ripped up a giant duvet...and on Sunday it was just picture-perfect! Though it's already getting warmer and yet again there's that dreary, dripping sound and huge lumps of snow dropping from the trees...but yesterday surpassed all my wildest dreams. I can't believe it's been more than a month since last time i wrote, i really meant to wright more often but just haven't been able to post any of those several drafts i've typed down...i have literally all the time in the world and am still unable to make the most of my hours. How do people with proper jobs, relations and families and all that keep from going under? Pictures taken yesterday in my parent's garden, around my home and out at Djurgården, where i had to go just to capture this magical winter-land! And for a little splash of colour i have to post this scrumptious Hermés scarf i shot at NK department store the other day.
Now temperatures have risen again, so that it snowed almost all of yesterday and that it's snowing richly today, is neither here nor there when it all melts away before it reaches the ground. The ice that had spread out across riddarfjärden is now slowly melting away. Allover is that depressing, dripping sound from drainpipes. I can't stand this! The feeling of winter is now completely gone again, it has been replaced by this tepid humidity. The honeysuckle on the balcony might be budding soon - wich i would love if this was in may and not the middle of january...now it's just saddening.
It looked like the water on riddarfjärden would freeze as it's done as long as i can remember -then it would turn into this huge open space where you can walk for several kilometres, not last year though, or the years before that -the last time was in the winter of 2005 wich was remarkably cold. As it looks this winter might turn out to be just as mild and dreary as it was last year - just like five months of march, wich is really the dingiest, dullest month of all.
It is just as depressing as a summer that completely rains away -or that has no rain at all... We have had mild winters before, but nothing like this. This just feels like the end of the world. I so miss that exhilarating feeling of walking in this magical, pristine winterland, over frozen waters, the brightness of the snow, the frost crystals on the windows.
Illustrations by Johann Heinrich Füssli and myself
Franco-anglophile, 18th century fanatic, Involuntarily unsociable - a social idiot, exclusive, reclusive, Self-deprecating, Drama-Queen, obsessive, prude, sybarite, antropophobic, inappropriate, intense, terrified, inhibited, relatively easy to please, friendly. Very tight lips - can't smile properly. Is in fact named something else. True name given by request...
"Music for a while shall all your cares beguile, wond'ring how your pains were eas'd, and disdaining to be pleas'd, till Alecto free the Dead from their eternal band. till the Snakes drop from her Head, and the whip from out her hand" -from "Oedipus" by John Dryden
Posts
