The Christianization of Scandinavia took place over a few hundred years and was completed by the early 12th century thanks to Sigurd the Crusader, the Norwegian king who subjugated the intransigent pagans of southern Sweden…
Posts published by “David Yearsley”
The Berlin Wall was breached on the night of November 9th, 1989. The German Democratic Republic was done. East Berliners poured through the suddenly opened border, stood on top of the “Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart” (Antifaschistischer…
Founded in 1947, the third and youngest of Berlin’s great opera houses is the Komische Oper—the comic opera. In the rubble of war, it took up residence in the late-nineteenth-century Metropol-Theater, beloved for its racy…
Opera thrives on competition as much as collaboration—on who can sing higher, louder, longer, more passionately; what production can seduce or scandalize most abundantly; which company can hoard the most prestige while staving off bankruptcy…
Movie screenings here start with short commercials: zany, wink-wink spots showing more than a little sun and skin to whet the appetite for ice cream and beer and cars and beach vacations. In contrast to…
It’s a tough time to be a star conductor. When the world goes to hell, everyone wants to point the finger at the maestro—at the one whose job it is to point at others. Last…
Midway through its near non-stop, culture-packed calendar running from August 30th to September 24th, the Berlin Musikfest last weekend brought two French symphony orchestras to the German capital’s famed concert hall, the Philharmonie. On Friday,…
I had come from the State Library on my bike, a long-term rental courtesy of an excellent and cheap Dutch company called Swapfiets with outlets in many European cities. I’d just pedaled down Unter den…