Going to Venice this summer?
Interested in history?
Book a tour with me, and I'll talk you ears off.
history
@classicalmusic
Opernabend
20. August 2026, 20:00 Uhr
Boito, Arrigo
Mefistofele
Mefistofele: Nicolai Ghiaurov
Faust: Luciano Pavarotti
Margherita: Mirella Freni
Marta: Nucci Condò
Wagner: Piero de Palma
Elena: Montserrat Caballé
Pantalis: Della Jones
Nerèo: Robin Leggate
London Opera Chorus, Trinity BoysChoir, National Philharmonic Orchestra
Leitung: Oliviero de Fabritiis
Jahr 1982
@classicalmusic
RIP
"Die größte Sopranistin ihrer Generation: Zum Tod von Ileana Cotrubaș"
Lovely Peeps! Your cool #history for the day! 🚀
(You might want to watch with sound off. The music has words & I found it difficult to hear the music, read the text, AND focus on the signing.)
If you want to just enjoy the signing, the full text is within this post. 😊
"Everyone’s talking about Artemis II. The first humans to travel to the moon in 50 years. Historic mission.
But nobody’s talking about the #Deaf men who made it possible.
In the late 1950s, #NASA had a problem. They needed to understand what weightlessness does to the human body. But every test subject kept getting violently motion sick.
So they came to #Gallaudet.
Eleven Deaf men. Most of them had lost their hearing to spinal meningitis as children, which also damaged their vestibular system. Their inner ears couldn’t be overwhelmed. They were immune to motion sickness.
NASA put them in centrifuges. Zero-gravity flights. A rotating room for twelve straight days. One experiment on a ferry in choppy Nova Scotia waters. The researchers got so seasick they had to cancel it. The Gallaudet Eleven? They were playing cards.
Their bodies gave NASA the data it needed to send humans into space.
No #Gallaudet_Eleven — no Mercury. No Mercury — no Apollo. No Apollo — no Artemis II.
Sixty years later, four astronauts just flew 252,000 miles from Earth & came home safely.
They stood on the shoulders of eleven Deaf men most people have never heard of.
Now you know!"
Edited 157d ago
@classicalmusic
Mátyás Seiber - Fantasia Concertante
André Gertler, violin
Symphony Orchestra of the Capital City of Prague
Václav Smetáček
rec. 1976
@classicalmusic
Johann Sebastian Bach
Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C major, BWV 564
Toccata and Fugue in D Minor BWV 565
Joseph Jongen (1873-1953)
Toccata from the Symphonie Concertante Op. 81
Virgil Fox, organ
Date: 28-31 August 1977
@classicalmusic
Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67
Sir Henry Wood, conducting
Queen's Hall Orchestra
Recorded in May 3, 1935
The book I’m reading does not imply this about Mongols at all.
There is a reason the Great Wall of China was built.
Edited 82d ago
(LONG POST) Fell down a fascinating rabbit hole today about a few little boys and a little girl in ancient China about 2100 years ago.
Emperor Wu went mad with paranoia in his old age, accusing everyone of using witchcraft against him. This led to him needlessly launching attacks on his own eldest son, who never intended to betray him, and the prince's own sons. This whole branch of the royal household was wiped out in the attack. Except... there was a baby. A brand new baby boy, only a few weeks old, the Emperor's great-grandchild. The baby's name was Bingyi.
Someone brought baby Bingyi to a prison rather than kill him as ordered. The prison warden personally took good care of him; when word got out and he was ordered to finish the job, he refused to kill the baby, knowing it would presumably cost him his life. However, the Emperor came to his senses and stopped the witch hunt. The order to kill baby Bingyi and this random prison warden along with him never came. Bingyi safely disappeared into the household of distant relatives, to live an ordinary middle-class life.
Emperor Wu died of old age, and his dying wish was for the crown to skip over all the sons he distrusted and go straight to the only one not yet old enough to have earned his distrust, the surprise offspring of a May-December fling. Emperor Zhao was still a small child. He was immediately married-on-paper to another small child, Lady Shangguan.
A few years later, Lady Shangguan's family was accused of planning a coup by Zhao's regent and executed, but she was spared on account of being too young to have possibly been in on it.
Zhao was, apparently, a completely reasonable and level-headed young man. He showed wisdom in dealing with court rumors and did not do the ridiculous things young people with power often do. When he found out that Bingyi was alive, he visited with the other boy, treated him with kindness and made sure his needs were met.
Unfortunately, Zhao dropped dead when he was 20. (No indications of foul play, he was just unlucky). He had no children; his marriage to Lady Shangguan may not have even ever been consummated. The Empress Dowager was 15 years old.
A nephew of Zhao was brought in to be the new emperor; he was slightly older than Lady Shangguan, at 17. And he... partied. Immediately. Extremely. Incessantly. He was hinted to stop. He was told to stop. He was told more boldly and explicitly to stop. He did not stop.
An entire 27 days after this loser nephew took the throne, Lady Shangguan put on her best dress, entered the court, sat down on the throne, and called for the nephew. He came in. She unrolled a list of over 1000 complaints that had accrued since he arrived at the palace. She fired him. A 15-year-old girl with no actual hard power fired the Emperor of China in front of all his ministers. And he turned around, left, and went home.
(And in a very Ancient Chinese approach, he was allowed to live but most of his attendants were executed for allowing him to grow into such a brat. Only a handful who were known to have boldly rebuked him were spared.)
Lady Shangguan was now in direct defacto control of the empire. However, she understood that trying to hold on to that for the rest of her life would be destabilizing, since her claims were paper-thin as the childless widow of a child-emperor, whose family was already executed for treason. She sent for Bingyi.
Bingyi ruled under the name Emperor Xuan, and is considered to have been one of the wisest emperors, being possessed of common sense and moral sympathy for the poor after a heathy, normal upbringing. Lady Shangguan quietly stepped back after thus saving the empire from disastrous misrule, never remarried, and was pretty much the only person on either side of her family to never get executed, exiled or driven to unalive.
Lady Shangguan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Empress_Dowager_Shangguan
Emperor Zhao: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Zhao_of_Han
Bingyi / Emperor Xuan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Xuan_of_Han
Loser Nephew: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_He_of_Changyi
Finally took the time (my internet connection was down...) to watch Johan Grimonprez' documentary "Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat".
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14452174/
If you're interested in #Africa #History #UN #Jazz it's really worth your time.
If you want to better understand what happened when #Congo "tried" #Independence from #Belgium in 1960, how USA conspired to kill #PatriceLumumba and why there was a war in #Katanga, then there's a lot in this documentary, while listening to good music.
Edited 1y ago
@classicalmusic
Opernabend
22. August 2026, 20:00 Uhr
Puccini, Giacomo
Manon Lescaut
Manon Lescaut: Maria Guleghina
Lescaut: Lucio Gallo
Il Cavaliere Renato Des Grieux: José Cura
Geronte di Ravoir: Luigi Roni
Edmondo: Marco Berti
der Wirt: Orazio Mori
ein Musiker: Gloria Banditelli
der Tanzlehrer: Mario Bolognesi
...
Coro del Teatro alla Scala, Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala
Leitung: Riccardo Muti
Jahr 1998
Vecinos is a new video account about Latin American history (the videos are in English by the way). You can follow the account at:
➡️ @vecinos_latin_american_history_vids
(Don't worry if it looks blank to you, that just means no one from your server follows it yet. Follow the account and its videos will start gradually showing up on your server too.)
You can also follow their non-video account at @VecinosHistory
#FeaturedPeerTube #History #LatinAmerica #LatinAmericanHistory #PeerTube
@classicalmusic
Wagner - TANNHÄUSER
Hermann, Landgraf von Thüringen: Martti Talvela
Tannhäuser: Wolfgang Windgassen
Wolfram von Eschenbach: Hermann Prey
Walther von der Vogelweide: Willi Hartmann
Biterolf: Gerd Nienstedt
Reinmar von Zweter: Dieter Slembeck
Heinrich der Schreiber: Hermann Winkler
Elisabeth, Nichte des Landgrafen: Leonie Rysanek
...
Chor und Orchester der Bayreuther Festspiele
André Cluytens
Bayreuth, 9. August 1965
@classicalmusic
Wagner - PARSIFAL
Amfortas: Theo Adam
Titurel: Martti Talvela
Gurnemanz: Hans Hotter
Parsifal: Jess Thomas
Klingsor: Gustav Neidlinger
Kundry: Astrid Varnay
Altsolo: Ruth Hesse
1. Gralsritter: Hermann Winkler
1. Knappe: Ruth Hesse
4. Knappe: Erwin Wohlfahrt
Blumenmädchen 1. Gruppe: Anja Silja
Simone Mangelsdorff
Helga Dernesch
...
Chor und Orchester der Bayreuther Festspiele
André Cluytens
Bayreuth, 10. August 1965
@classicalmusic
Richard Strauss – Vier Letzte Lieder (1948)
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf - soprano
Otto Ackermann conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra
(1953)
@classicalmusic
Franz Schubert - Die Winterreise D.911
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau - baritone
Gerald Moore - piano
(Festival de Prades, 1955)
@classicalmusic
Gustav Mahler – Das Lied von der Erde
Christa Ludwig – contralto
Fritz Wunderlich – tenor
Otto Klemperer conducting the New Philharmonia & Philharmonia orchestras
(1967)
This story is amazing.
Giant octopuses of the Cretaceous were up to 19 meters (60 feet) long.
They were the apex ocean predators of their day, eating up plesiosaurs and mosasaurs.
And they were apparently quite intelligent.
Sorry we missed you!
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aea6285 #science #nature #history
🛸 Buzludzha is a massive Communist monument in the Bulgarian mountains.
Its Brutalist saucer design and 107m tower with a red star made it a landmark of the Eastern Bloc. Since 1989, harsh winters and neglect left the interior and its 25 tonnes of mosaics in ruins.
Now recognised as endangered heritage, the site is undergoing vital stabilisation. There has been preservation to protect the hall’s dome and mosaics.
#Buzludzha #Bulgaria #Photography #Brutalist #Abandoned #History
I've just published a short blog about an astonishing group of Assyrian missionaries who used to go on extensive lecturing and fundraising tours across Wales between 1882 and 1914. The blog includes an interactive map and newspaper articles published about them over this period. Enjoy!
https://bydbach.hcommons.org/assyrian-missionaries-in-wales-1882-1914/
#Wales #History #histodons #BAMEHistoryIsWelshHistory #Newspapers #Missionaries #HistoryOfReligion #Assyrians
@classicalmusic
Felix Mendelssohn
Octet
Arturo Toscanini:
NBC Symphony
Date: 30 March 1947 Broadcast
I just created my first collection on history. Which historians or other history-related accounts in the fediverse am I missing?
Edited 80d ago
Rated The Rape of Recy Taylor 8/10
Edited 25d ago
It's good to know that in some places -- many places, one hopes -- there is a sense of timelessness, a connection to the past that does not bow down before technology and trends.
Ancient Sanctuary framed print -- https://www.pictorem.com/2626142/ancient-sanctuary/
Free shipping in the U.S. and Canada
#art #artwork #mastoart #fediart #buyintoart #ayearforart #fedigiftshop #italy #travel #church #cathedral #ancient #history #landscape #sunset #nature #wallart #decor
I send thanks to the buyer from Washington who purchased a shopping/tote bag of
Along the Outer Wall -- https://fineartamerica.com/featured/along-the-outer-wall-steve-henderson.html?product=tote-bag
May you and this tote go on many adventures together.
#art #artwork #mastoart #fediart #buyintoart #ayearforart #fedigiftshop #italy #travel #europe #vacation #spring #flowers #history #hilltop #village #sale #flowers
