The north wind was relentless, at our backs but cutting through us as we walked along the harborside to a performance of Rigoletto at the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen. Our coats were of wool…
Posts published by “David Yearsley”
What to do with Don Giovanni? The title character—not to mention the universally recognized operatic masterpiece that bears his name—should, by rights, have been cancelled in the wake of #MeToo and probably long before. Mozart’s…
Up to kick-off and even after it, I was expecting the Executive Order. Or the Black Shirts. Or both. If Commander-in-Chief Trump can, while flipping through his own large-print rulebook, change the name of the…
MELANIA made it to Berlin but was only showing at a single early-afternoon time. Brandishing my coveted CounterPunch press card, I tried to talk my way in for free. The woman at the counter was…
Anglophone theatre people wish each other good luck (or better, anti-bad luck) with the phrase “break a leg.” The Germans double the violence: “Hals- und Beinbruch” — break your neck and your leg, not that…
In early 1746, the parfumier and glovemaker Pierre Dumoulin left his native Lyon and headed north towards Germany. He was on his way to foreign lands to exhibit three remarkable objects constructed by the celebrated…
With the New Cold War heating up, and American citizens under siege at home, it’s no small wonder that a Russian named Berlin can still claim to have composed this nation’s best-loved song. Born in…
There’s little to laugh at in 2026. Yet humor is more vital than ever, even if comic barbs and palliatives aren’t enough to stop the U.S. invasion of Greenland. Ironically, insane American adventures stock the…
Hildegard Knef would have celebrated her 100th birthday on December 28 just passed. Given the number of cigarettes she smoked (Marlboros, three packs a day), the years she spent addicted to morphine (nearly twenty) as…