La zorrita astuta
Here’s a video of the Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá – its youth section mostly – performing Janáček‘s Cunning Little Vixen in August 2021. The staging is as simple and low-budget as they go. I would call it home-made, but –…
Winterings in Trans-Scythia
Fragments of a blog
Winterings in Trans-Scythia
Fragments of a blog
Category Latin America
Bolívar and Miranda
It’s been more than ten years since Hugo Chávez’s last visit to Moscow. He spent some of his time being driven around the Russian capital in a red Lada Priora and helped unveil the foundation stone for an equestrian statue…
Bands in translation
Speaking of translations — after Sandie Shaw won the Eurovision contest in 1967 with Puppet on a String, she went on to record it in God knows how many languages. Actually, French, Italian, German and Spanish, if Wikipedia is to…
Mangueira 2020
The Guardian reports from Rio de Janeiro and Maranhão: From raperos to roqueiros, a growing chorus of musicians are denouncing the extremist politician [Bolsonaro] and his assault on their trade. Roqueiros broadly means rock musicians. Raperos refers to rappers, obviously,…
“A thriving subculture of new-age truth-seekers and UFO-spotters”
Sam Cowie reports from São Paolo for The Guardian: Siddhartha Chaibub’s suspicions that the Earth wasn’t really round were first aroused when he stumbled across a YouTube video while living in Brazil’s capital, Brasília… “The model that is imposed on…
Elections in Russia and Bolivia
When Russia holds elections, whether national, regional or municipal, the votes are first counted at the polling stations. Each station serves a polling precinct, the minimal unit in the system so to say. Each precinct has its own electoral commission,…
Shiyes and Agua Zarca
The Moscow Times reports on the latest developments in the Shiyes protests: Opponents of a controversial landfill in northwestern Russia have asked Sweden, Norway and Finland for help in averting an environmental crisis… Five regional environmental groups have asked the…
Unexpected monsters
Osip Mandelstam wrote a poem in 1933 that begins approximately like this: Do not tempt alien tongues – rather try to forget them:No matter what, you won’t be able to bite glass with your teeth. It’s not an invective against…
Bloodshed and chaos: Russia’s preferred scenario for Venezuela?
According to Secretary Pompeo, Maduro had a plane idling on the tarmac to leave Venezuela, but Russians indicated to Maduro that he should stay. Pompeo said that Maduro was headed to Havana, Cuba, and that it is “a fact” that…
Blackout in Venezuela: which link was the weakest?
A Russian saying goes, literally, “where it’s thin, it tears.” In his Outlandish Proverbs, published in 1640, George Herbert has a similar one: “The thread breakes, where it is weakest.” Turgenev used it as the title for an early play…
True Blue
Oh to be young, handsome, educated, and to win the crown like a changeling prince returning from thralldom in a company of friends to claim his due. They descended from a yacht – a yacht! – one December morning, sixty…
The man who saw San Che dead speaks
An accidental find: the famous reporter and former Guardian writer Richard Gott has written a history of Cuba, and lo… Fidel is not a tyrant, says Gott, and does not rule without the consent of the people. The “and” in…