Gustav Mahler’s Rueckert Lieder: If you love for beauty

Today I want to share with you one of the songs that Gustav Mahler wrote to poetry by Friedrich Rueckert. 

The poem is simple, almost childish, but the song is a masterpiece. Mahler has managed to condense in his lieder all the passion of his music, and the fact that he has not writen even one opera, being the Director of the Vienna Opera for ten years, testifies to his immense focus on lieder and song cycles.  At this point it is pertinent to note that Mahler’ smusic was not played and/or recorded much, until the 1950’s. One of the conductors who “un-earthed” Mahler was Dimitri Mitropoulos.

My mother was studying in New York in early 1950s and was a regular at Carnegie Hall, where Mitropoulos was conducting. I owe it to her that this door of humanity and civilization was opened for me at a very early stage in my life.  

 

Friedrich Rueckert : If you love for beauty (Liebst du um Schönheit)

If you love for beauty,

Oh, do not love me!

Love the sun,

She has golden hair!

If you love for youth,

Oh, do not love me!

Love the spring;

It is young every year!

If you love for treasure,

Oh, do not love me!

Love the mermaid;

She has many clear pearls!

If you love for love,

Oh yes, do love me!

Love me ever,

I’ll love you evermore!

Translation from German to English copyright © 1996 by David Kenneth Smith (dksmith (AT) geneva.edu)

The clip that follows features mezzo-soprano Angelika Kirchschlager,

and is in my opinion of the best interpretations of the song.  

Liebst Du um Schönheit Angelika Kirchschlager Gustav Mahler, Fünf Lieder nach Gedichten von Friedrich Rückert Live from the Rheinvokal Festival, Mittelrheinhalle, Andernach, 19.06.2009

Mackerel slow-cooked with garlic, red peppers and parsley – Σκουμπρι με σκορδο, κοκκινη πιπερια και μαιντανο

Today I wanted to eat fish and so I went to find my good fishmonger. One of my buys was super-fresh mackerel, which is one of my favorite fishes.

Σημερα το τραπεζι εχει ψαρακι, που το εχω λαχταρησει λογω ταξιδιων στα μερη που εχει μονο γουρουνακια, κοτοπουλακια και αρνακια με μοσχαρακια! Πηγα λοιπον στον καλο μου τον ψαρα στην Ραφηνα και αναμεσα στα αλλα πηρα φρεσκωτατα σκουμπρια (οταν τα εζουληξα ηταν σφιχτοτερα και απο το ….), που ειναι απο τα αγαπημενα μου ψαρακια.

I decided to cook it in a primitive way. A child can do it. Here it goes.

Αποφασισα να το μαγειρεψω με ενα πρωτολειο τροπο, τοσο ευκολο που και ενα παιδι μπορει να το κανει. Ξεκιναμε λοιπον. Χρειαζομαστε αφθονο σκορδο, κοκκινες πιπεριες, και ελαιολαδο σεε να μεγαλο τηγανι (με βαθυ πατο). Ψιλοκοβουμε τα σκορδα και τις πιπεριες, και μαραινουμε σε μετρια φωτια.

Chop plenty of garlic, and dice red peppers. Throw them in a pan with a touch of olive oil, in medium heat.

After the juices have started running and the aromas of garlic start to be released, lower the heat to low and place the fish on the “bed” of peppers and garlic. The belly of the fish must be down, touching the “bed”.

Αφου μαραθουνε λιγο οι πιπεριες και αρχισουν να αναδυονται τα αρωματα απο το σκορδο, βαζουμε τα ψαρακαι στο τηγανι με την κοιλια να ακουμπα στο “κρεββατακι” με τα σκορδα και τις πιπεριες. Χαμηλωνουμε τη φωτια στο “χαμηλο” (στην κλιμακα του 1-10 να ειναι το πολυ στο 3).

The last step is to add chopped parsley on top of the fish.

Προσθετουμε πανω απο τα ψαρακια σαν τελευταιο βημα και ψιλοκομμενο μαιντανο.

The fish needs about 30 minutes in low heat to be cooked. This is slow-cooking at its best.

Τα ψαρακια χρειαζονται περιπου 30 λεπτα για να γινουν σε αυτη τη χαμηλη φωτια. Ηπια μαγειρικη στην καλυτερη εκφραση της! Καθως τα ψαρακια μαγειρευονται ηπιως, ετοιμαζουμε το “κρεββατακι” του πιατου, που ειναι πατατες τηγανισμενες ηπιως σε ελαιολαδο.

While the fish is cooking, we prepare the real “bed” of the dish, which is sliced potatoes slow-fried in olive oil.

We are now ready to serve the fish on top of the potato slice.

Και τωρα ειμαστε ετοιμοι για να σερβιρουμε το ψαρακι επι της πατατας.

The potatoes are crunchy, the fish is succulent and firm (as it is fresh), the garlic and the red pepper go very well together, the parsley tones down the rather strong ingredients. If you like you add flakes of chilli peppers on top for an extra punch. In any case, this is a delicious, easy to do dish that reminds everyone the virtues of slow cooking.

Οι πατατες ειναι τραγανιστες, η σαρκα του ψαριου ζουμερη και στητη, το σκορδο με τις πιπεριες παιζει ομορφα παιχνιδια, ενω ο μαιντανος ερχεται να τα καλμαρει ολα αυτα. Αν θελετε να ειστε προς την καυτερη πλευρα, προσθεστε και λιγο καυτερη πιπερια (μπουκοβο ας πουμε) και καλη ορεξη.

(E la nave va) Το παπορι απ΄την Περσια (Ο πλους συνεχιζεται)

Ο πλους συνεχιζεται, ατελειωτο το κουβαρι ξετυλιγεται και σταματα για λιγο στα στενα της κορινθου, λιγο νοτιωτερα απο τα δυο στενα των τρικαλων, για να μαρτυρησει την πορεια του παπορι απο την περσια. Ο,τι και να συνεβει στον σακαφλια, μοιαζει λιγο μπροστα στο δραμα που εκτυλισσεται μπροστα μας.

Το παπόρι απ’ την Περσία
πιάστηκε στην Κορινθία
τόννοι έντεκα γεμάτο
με χασίσι μυρωδάτο

Τώρα κλαίνε όλα τ’ αλάνια
που θα μείνουνε χαρμάνια

Βρέ μπουρνάζε μου τελώνη
τη ζημιά ποιός την πληρώνει
και σ’ αυτή την ιστορία
μπήκαν τα λιμεναρχεία

Ήταν προμελετημένη
καρφωτή και λαβωμένη
δυό μεμέτια(*) τα καϋμένα
μες στο κόλπο ήταν μπλεγμένα

(*) Μουσουλμάνος, ο Μωαμεθανός, κατά τους Έλληνες (ίσως σύντμηση του «Μωάμεθ»)

Και τωρα ακροαση απο αυθεντικη εκτελεση

Sweet Movie (1974) – A film by Dusan Makavejev

Now that memory lane is open, and thanks to the slow boat ride to Vienna, I bring back to my personal space the masterpiece of Dusan Makavejef, Sweet Movie.

To begin, I quote from “criterion” the story of the movie,(not that it matters a lot):

“Sweet Movie starts its story with a contest—the Miss World competition of 1984, where top honors go to the prettiest virgin. The winner is Miss Canada, and her prize is marriage to Mr. Dollars, the world’s wealthiest man. Her new husband turns out to be quite a weirdo, though, with a gold-plated penis and a morbid fear of sex-related disease. Angered by her rejection of him on their wedding night, he has her kidnapped, stuffed into a suitcase, and shipped off to Paris, where she makes love with a Spanish crooner. Next she joins a subversive commune, living amid the extravagant shenanigans of its wildly uninhibited members.

Meanwhile, steaming down an Amsterdam canal is a most unusual boat, named Survival and bearing an enormous image of Karl Marx on its bow. The passengers are mostly children, the cargo is candy and sugar. Captain Anna Planeta is hailed by a bike-riding sailor with “Potemkin” written on his cap, whom she picks up and takes as her lover, treating him to steamy sex in her on-board sugar vat. Later she stabs him there, but he responds with laughter. Evidently, even death isn’t very fearsome on the good ship Survival.”

I remember the communal boat “survival” with Karl Marx’s head on its prow,

the chocolate infused orgasm,

and the murder in the sugar vat, but most of all, the movie brings back to me this unique sense of subversive, ruthless fun.

Avanti o popolo, alla riscossa, Bandiera rossa, Bandiera rossa!

And the sailor wears the Potemkin hat! Brilliant!

And, of course, the glorious score of Manos Hadjidakis!

Music & lyrics : Manos Hadjidakis,
except 4 & 8 : lyrics by Makavejev & Ann Lonnberg

1.Ta paidia kato ston kampo (2:42)
2.Oi paragkes kai oi anthropoi (1:30)
3.Serenata gia thn sexoualikh apousia (3:16)
4.Is there life on the earth? (2:35) with Anne Lonnberg

5.H sexoualikh polyrrythmia (2:07)
6.Oi paragkes kai h kefalh toy karl marx (2:56)
7.Nyxterino (3:24)
8.Is there life on the earth? (1:04)
9.Ta paidia kato ston kampo (3:37)
10.strip tease gia tria paidia (4:47)
11.nyxterino gia dyo fones (2:22)
12.o xoros ths sokolatas (2:39)
13.ta paidia kato ston kampo (2:31)
14.h sexoualikh polyrrythmia kai ta tria paidia (3:01)

Additional music : Les Chants Révolutionnaires du Monde – Les Flûtes Roumaines

(those of us who are old enough, may remember Anne Lonnberg as the young blonde girl who played with Yannis Voglis in “Koritsia ston ilio”

to refresh our collective memory, and in the spirit of Dusan, here is a clip, which starts by showing the shepherd Voglis chasing the blonde Lonnberg)

Μνημη Πολυτεχνειου 1973 – 2009

Μερα που ειναι σημερα η μνημη ξυπναει και αναμοχλευει τα παληα.

Η μνημη ομως δεν υπαρχει αφ εαυτης, αλλα παντα μεσα στο πλαισιο του παροντος χρονου. Και η συγκριση του παροντος με το παρελθον που γονιμοποιει τη μνημη ειναι αναποφευκτο.

Κοιταζω γυρω μου και βλεπω τη χωρα των χαμενων ευκαιριων. Μετα απο 36 χρονια και παρολους τους αγωνες, τη θυσια της Κυπρου, τα σημαντικα ποσα που εισερευσαν απο την Ευρωπαικη Ενωση, το κρατος ειναι χρεωκοπημενο, τα εθνικα συμφεροντα εχουν παραγκωνισθει απο την αναγκη να ειμαστε αρεστοι στους αμερικανους, οι ιδεες ειναι παροπλισμενες, σχεδον μουσειακα αντικειμενα, και πολλοι νεοι και ωριμοτεροι παλευουν με το τερας της ανεργιας. Οσο για τις πολιτικες ηγεσιες, και τα πολιτικα κομματα, η συνολικη εικονα ειναι απογοητευτικη.

Εχω πλεον πεισθει οτι σαν λαος δεν μαθαινουμε απο την εμπειρια μας, και παμε σαν τα ζωα προς το σφαγειο.

Στο ατομικο επιπεδο μπορει ακομη να σωζονται καποιοι ελληνες και καποιες ελληινιδες, ομως στο συλλογικο επιπεδο μας παρεσυρε το ρεμα και φοβαμαι οτι τωρα το ρεμα εγινε ποταμι και δεν παει πισω.

Ξερω, ειναι απαισιοδοξα αυτα που γραφω τετοια μερα, αλλα η χρεωκοπια σε συλλογικο επιπεδο ειναι βαρυ πραγμα. Και δη η χρεωκοπια παντου!

Restaurant Steirereck – Vienna, Austria

Introduction

Today I continue with my second gastronomic experience in Vienna, the first being in the Restaurant Vestibuel, reported a couple of days ago.

After a rather long meeting and under very wet conditions I found myself in the comfort and warmth of the Steirereck Restaurant in the middle of Stadtpark in Vienna.I selected it after reading the Michelin Red Guide, which has awarded two stars to the restaurant and is overall very enthusiastic about he place.

I will start with the food, and finish with the wines.

Part I: The Food

The first bite came compliments of the chef. Trout with onion and yellow ginger. Succulent and full of aromas, a nice way to start the meal.

Gillardeau Oysters with buttermilk, glass pasta and pea shoots. This is the first dish in the 5-course set menu of the chef. The dish evolves around the oysters and magnifies their taste and flavors. A subtle and discrete dish.

Braised “Oxheart” Carrot with fillet, milt and marrow from Styrian beef. When I first read the menu, I thought that this was the heat of the ox! Wrong! Oxheart is a type of carrot, named so because its shape is like the heart of the ox! The braised carrot was served on top of raw Styrian beef fillet sliced paper-thin, and topped with a very light vinaigrette with marrow. The sticks you see on top are a type of rich bread with majoram.

Gilt Head Bream and Moscardini, with black radish, rocket and parsley. The fish was pan fried to perfection, its fresh firm and juicy. And -as always- the skin was the best bite of all! The bream was served on top of a angel pasta bed and was accompanied by one moscardino in vinaigrette, and paper-thin black radish, which was delicious! I must say that I somehow lost the flavors of the moscardini, this iwas rather neutralized. But if you exclude that, everything else in the dish was perfect.

Pheasant breast with chevril root, chanterelle mushrooms and yellow dates. What a wonderful dish! The breast was cooked to perfection, succulent, full of flavours, accompanied by the mushrooms and the dates. But the real taste booster was at the bottom. The skin of the bird was served with a semi sweet and savoury sauce, and this made the difference!

Cheese selected from a trolley with 60 different cheeses from Europe (mainly France and Italy). My only comment on the cheese is that next time I visit the restaurant, I will ask to have a five course cheese menu!

Part II: The Wines

I now come to the wines of the evening (wine maker, grape, year):

1. Prager, Gruener Veltliner, 2008. Very young, fresh, a superb introduction to the menu.

2. Hiedler, Riesling, 2008.

3. Emmerich Knoll, Riesling Kellerberg, 2007, Smaragd. A knock-out! ? Never had a riesling like this, and I have already had quite many!  Intense fruity aroma, pepper aftertaste, full body! It stood up to the strongest and most mature cheeses like the best brunello! Totally unbelievable!

Epilogue

Value for money: We were a party of three, and the bill for all of this, which lasted exactly 4 hours with immaculate service, was 140 EURO per person.

Style of cooking: This is the type of cooking that builds on the tradition, but is not blinded by it. Especially in the oxheart dish, I felt that all the centuries of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, were somehow encapsulated in the dish. Hegel would be very proud of this dish, as it more or less excemplifies his concept of history as eternal progress through time.

 

Hugo von Hofmannstahl’s Elektra

Hugo von Hofmannstahl was a writer born in Vienna. I got to know his work from the operas of the German composer Richard Strauss.

My recent visit to Vienna, brought back to me memories of the operas and his work, and today I want to share some elements of his masterpiece, Elektra. Hofmannstahl took Sophokle’s “Athenian”5th century B.C.  Elektra and turned her into a “Vienese” Elektra of the beginning of the 20th century.

Quoting from the book “Hugo Von Hofmannsthal: The Whole Difference” Edited by J. D. McClatchy, published by Princeton University Press (2008):

“It was Sophocles’ Elektra that gave Hofmannsthal another of his triumphs. His version opened at Berlin’s Kleines Theater on October 30, 1903, with Gertrud Eysolt in the leading role, in a production by Max Reinhardt. Soon after it opened, the composer Richard Strauss saw the play and immediately realized its potential for operatic treatment. Reinhardt’s earlier production of Oscar Wilde’s Salome had fired his imagination, and when he saw Elektra on the stage he was already at work on his opera Salome. Once that opera premiered

in 1906, Strauss wrote to Hofmannsthal for permission to set his play. The playwright set about trimming and adding new material in accordance with the composer’s needs, and to his delight, Strauss called Hofmannsthal “a born librettist.”Their opera opened at the Ko¨nigliches Opernhaus in Dresden on January 25, 1909, and was an immediate, if controversial, success around the world. Its complex psychologizing cannot disguise its raw brutality. Its single act hurtles through a series of confrontations towards the fatal dance of triumph at its conclusion,

as Elektra celebrates her brother Orestes’ murder of their mother Clytemnestra in revenge for her killing of their father Agamemnon. The text is a delirious rhapsody of anguish and violence; the music erupts with demonic force.

Their opera opened at the Koenigliches Opernhaus in Dresden on January 25, 1909, and was an immediate, if controversial, success around the world. Its complex psychologizing cannot disguise its raw brutality. Its single act hurtles through a series of confrontations towards the fatal dance of triumph at its conclusion,as Elektra celebrates her brother Orestes’ murder of their mother Clytemnestra in revenge for her killing of their father Agamemnon. The text is a delirious rhapsody of anguish and violence; the music erupts with demonic force.”

I now want to introduce  Elektra’s monologue, when she is calling on her father in a state of delusion.

The monologue is sung by the unforgettable Hildegard Behrens, who died earlier this year at the age of 72. The performance in the Metropolitan Opera of New York is conducted by James Levine (1994). You have to be patient to watch and hear and read the words, but the nine minutes are worth it!

The following synopsis is from the Metropolitan Opera of New York

Libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, adapted from his play
World premiere: Dresden, Court Theater, January 25, 1909

Mycenae, ancient Greece. In the courtyard of the royal palace, servant girls comment on the wild behavior of Elektra, the eldest daughter of the late king Agamemnon. After they have left, Elektra appears, dressed in rags (“Allein! Weh, ganz, allein”). She is obsessed with thoughts of her father’s murder at the hands of her mother, Klytämnestra, and her mother’s lover, Aegisth. Calling on her father’s spirit, she renews her vow of vengeance. Her tirade is interrupted by her younger sister, Chrysothemis, who urges Elektra to give up her obsession with revenge so they both can lead normal lives. Elektra mocks Chrysothemis, who runs off as noises from within the palace announce the approach of Klytämnestra.

The queen staggers in. Drugs, loss of sleep, and fear of retribution for her husband’s murder have made a wreck of her (“Ich habe keine guten Nächte”). Surprised that Elektra will talk to her, she appeals to her daughter’s intelligence and demands to know what she needs to do to find peace of mind. A sacrifice has to be made, Elektra replies. When Klytämnestra fails to comprehend what her daughter is hinting at, Elektra screams at her that it is Klytämnestra herself who must die and that she and her banished brother Orest will kill her (“Was bluten muss?”). Klytämnestra is horrified, but when her confidante runs in and whispers something, her mood changes abruptly. Laughing maniacally, she disappears into the palace.

Her behavior is explained when Chrysothemis reappears with news that Orest is dead. Stunned, Elektra at first refuses to believe her, then tells her sister that she must now help kill Klytämnestra and Aegisth. Chrysothemis runs off in terror. As Elektra frantically starts digging for the buried axe that killed Agamemnon, a stranger appears. She asks him what he wants and he calmly replies that he has been sent to bring news of Orest’s death (“Was willst du, fremder Mensch?”). But when Elektra reveals that she is Agamemnon’s daughter, he tells her Orest lives. Suddenly servants appear, kissing his hands and feet. Frightened, Elektra asks who he is. The dogs in the courtyard know me, the stranger replies, but not my own sister? Crying his name, Elektra gives in to her unspeakable joy and declares she has lived only to avenge their father’s murder. When Orest’s guardian tells him the queen waits inside, the men enter the palace.

Elektra waits anxiously and when a scream is heard she knows Orest has killed their mother. Aegisth arrives, having heard the news of Orest’s death, and Elektra lights his way into the palace with sarcastic courtesy. A moment later he reappears at a window, crying for help, before he is dragged inside and killed. While tumultuous confusion spreads through the palace and courtyard, Elektra, in a state of ecstasy, begins a triumphal dance. Chrysothemis returns but Elektra doesn’t hear her and at the climax of the dance falls dead.”

Susan Bullock as Elektra

Tim Ashley’s review for the Guardian back in 2003, is illuminating, and I therefore take the liberty to quote it almost in its entirety.

“……..Yet beneath some of those early comments lurked distorted vestiges of the truth. The opera had hit raw nerves. Each age reinvents classical mythology in its own image. Strauss and Hofmannsthal were holding up a mirror to their times and many didn’t like the reflection. A study of pathological hatred and self-perpetuating violence, Elektra forms a grim prophecy of the convulsions that dominated the 20th century and continue into the 21st.

The myth of Electra forms part of the vast classical saga of the house of Atreus, whose nominal founder, after a row with his brother, Thyestes, killed the latter’s children and served them up to him to eat. Thereafter, the gods compelled various members of this tribe to take one life for another, then to be murdered in revenge in their turn.

The Atreidan myth is the only subject common to all three extant Greek tragic dramatists, though they approached it in different ways. Aeschylus’s Oresteia focuses on chains of retribution and guilt. Euripides’ Electra ironically questions belief in a metaphysical system that encourages crime only to punish it. Sophocles’ Electra, centring on the heroine’s grief for her father and her overwhelming desire for Orestes to return to shed his mother’s blood, is widely regarded as the most psychologically advanced of Greek tragedies though Sophocles still presents the Atreides as motivated by divine commandments.

Hofmannsthal wrote his own Elektra in 1903 in response to a request for a version of Sophocles’ from the Berlin-based director Max Reinhardt, and what he came up with was groundbreaking. Fastidious, intellectual and precociously erudite, Hofmannsthal’s head was full of both the naturalistic theatre of Ibsen and Strindberg, and the murky psychological probings of symbolist poetry. His response to Reinhardt’s request was to haul Sophocles into the present.

Much has been made of his ditching of many overt trappings of Greek drama, such as turning Sophocles’ single-minded chorus into a gaggle of squabbling maids. Infinitely more important, however, was his decision to jettison the myth’s metaphysics in their entirety. There is no divinely imposed pattern of retribution, no Furies to goad and torment his Orest, and the characters are consequently at the mercy of their own uncontrollable psyches and irrationalistic obsessions. Myth becomes the embodiment of psychological extremism as Hofmannsthal collides with his contemporary Freud.

Elektra has often been cited as the first play to take Freudian theory on board. In some respects this is erroneous, since the only psychoanalytic work Hofmannsthal knew at the time was Studies on Hysteria, co-written by Freud and Joseph Breuer and published in 1895. Elektra does, however, anticipate not only psychoanalysis, but other developments in psychiatry.

Hofmannsthal depicted Elektra as an obsessional neurotic long before Freud went public with his analysis of the condition. She and her mother are locked in a horrific co-dependency. Elektra’s relentless thirst for blood fuels Klytemnestra’s guilt, which she seeks in turn to assuage by turning to her daughter in the hope of some sort of solace. Terrified by nightmares of Orest’s return, Klytemnestra asks Elektra to interpret and cure her dreams. In Hofmannsthal, however, unlike Freud, there are no cures: Elektra tells her mother her nightmares must continue until the axe falls and extinguishes her life.

Throughout, both sexual motivations and repression dominate. Elektra has sacrificed her sexuality to keep her obsession alive, and describes, in a scary passage, how she gave birth, parthenogenetically, to “curses and despair”. Hofmannsthal, far from emphasising Freud, admitted that his principal influence was Hamlet. Both play and opera form an examination of the neurotic bifurcation between fantasy and action.

Nowadays, it is impossible to think of Hofmannsthal’s text without Strauss’s music, though the play proved influential in its own right, opening the way for later dramatists to reinvent classical myth as psychodrama. Jean Anouilh’s Antigone and Sartre’s The Flies are among its many successors. The playwright most strongly influenced by Hofmannsthal was Eugene O’Neill, who first read Elektra in the mid-1920s, and was inspired to write Mourning Becomes Electra as a result.

Strauss, meanwhile, saw Elektra during its opening run in the winter of 1903-04 and promptly contacted Hofmannsthal with a view to turning it into an opera. It wasn’t until 1906 that they could actually start work together on Elektra, by which time, Strauss, to Hofmannsthal’s alarm, began dithering. He wanted a libretto on a different subject, he told Hofmannsthal, who quietly held firm. Once work on the score was begun, Strauss, usually the most fluent and confident of musicians, began to suffer from composer’s block.

Strauss was a secretive man, and his chirrupy letters to Hofmannsthal make no mention of the trauma he was going through, namely that the text was triggering deep anxieties deriving from his own ambivalent attitude towards his parents. Strauss’s father, a domineering man, who encouraged his son’s compositions but repeatedly disparaged the results, had died in 1905, an event which in turn caused Strauss’s mother (whose mental health was never less than precarious) to have a massive breakdown, necessitating confinement in a sanatorium.

The subject matter of Elektra touched every raw nerve in Strauss’s being and explains why he took so long over the score. Those same raw nerves, however, also spilled into every bar of the opera’s music and also explain the torrential savagery of the emotions it recreates in the listener. Elektra is at once terrifying and elating, and to experience it is to go beyond the limits of reason into a world of naked, uncontrollable emotion. The collaboration between Strauss and Hofmannthal lasted for more than 20 years and became one of the most famous partnerships in operatic history, though neither was to produce work of such dreadful intensity again…….”

Restaurant Vestibuel – Vienna Austria

This is a hot report, I have not even digested the food yet, but there is a burning desire inside me to report immediately, as if I could this way relay to you some of the magic I have experienced tonight in Vienna.

I am here for a meeting and I arrived shortly before dinner time. I stay in the historical center, and found the “Vestibul” from the Michelin Red Guide, where it has been awarded a “Bib Gourmand” citation, meaning best value for money.

In any case, I walked the one kilometer in a very mild night and arrived at the restaurant.

It is across the boulevard from the Parliament, in a quiet corner of the Burg Theater.

The decoration inside is 19th century “fin de siecle”, as you can see from the bar photograph.

I was greeted by Veronika Doppler, who kindly showed me to a smoking table near the bar.

The friendly waiter recommended the house specialty for a starter, and I obeyed.

The dish arrived in the hands of the chef, Christian Domschitz, who explained that it is crunchy gabbage, lightly treated in salt and vinegar, served to accompany the lobster in its butter sauce. This was a first course, and it had in it almost half a lobster! Tender, juicy, divine!

This dish is a poem to the contrast of textures and the divinity of the lobster’s fragile mortal flesh.

If mortality is so beautiful, I am happy to be mortal!

The main course was my choice. black truffle with beef marrow, served on a “sponge” of crispy white bread. This is beyond description! I have never before tasted such a sweet, buttery substance, that melts in your mouth with overpowering you, while at the same time the truffle infuses the liquid with all the aromas of the woods.

This orgy of a dish was accompanied by a fiery red wine made by Triebauer.

And now the dessert! Dark chocolate praline with campari sauce in the middle, accompanied by blood orange sorbet on the left and orange grog on the right.

The grog was mildly hot, and contrasted beautifully the cold sorbet.

Mamma mia!

Veronika, Christian, thank you!

I will be back!

Mit herzlichen gruessen!

The 20th century Venus of Urbino – Monica Bellucci

I know, I know, it was supposed to be only a three part sequence, but life is unpredictable, and Monica is the favourite of the Maestro. While I was indulging with all the others, the Maestro appeared in front of me and said that Monica is his clear favourite! How could a mere mortal confront the Maestro Tiziano?

It is not a blonde after all!

It is not an American!

It is an Italian girl!

And what a girl she is!

She is smoking hot, she is true fire, she is going all the way!

Lets face it, the Maestro is right!

Beauty is such a transient feature,

but again, life is!

And yet it is not,

it depends on how you look at it!

And how you feel!

And what you want and what you need!

Buonanotte amici!!!

Mille bacci a tutti!!!

The 20th century Venus of Urbino – Part III: Streep, Pfeiffer, Thurman

This is Part III of the search for the 20th century Venus of Urbino, starring Meryl Streep, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Uma Thurman. After Part I (Cardinale, Aimee, Hayworth), and Part II (Vitti, Deneuve, Dunaway), this is now the final part.

Meryl Streep

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
~Albert Einstein ~

Michelle Pfeiffer

Remember how in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind,
he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty,
but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality),
and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may.”
N.B.: This famous aphorism is often misquoted, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
~Plato ~

Uma Thurman

She walks in beauty,
Like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes
~Lord Byron ~

Conclusion

There is no conclusion.

What began as a quest for the discovery of the 20th century Venus of Urbino, ended in a dead end.

Beauty is endless, cannot be confined in one vessel of human form.