Dingo the Dissident

THE BLOG OF DISQUIET : Qweir Notions, an uncommonplace-book from the Armpit of Diogenes, binge-thinker jottings since 2008 .

Friday, 20 July 2018

Kolkata

(formerly Calcutta, capital of Bengal)
has more theatres than London and New York combined.

Molière was translated into Bengali
before his plays were rendered into English...

1 comment:

bandit said...

the oldest opera house in all of Africa, The Khedivial Opera House, was built on the orders of the the governor of Egypt and Sudan, a vassal of the Ottoman Empire, to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal and was dedicated on 1 November 1869

Verdi's opera Rigoletto was the first opera performed at the opera house on 1 November 1869. A grander exhibition was planned for this new theatre. After months of delay due to the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, Verdi's new opera, Aida, received its world premiere on 24 December 1871.

Verdi originally chose to write a brief orchestral prelude instead of a full overture for the opera. He then composed an overture of the "potpourri" variety to replace the original prelude. However, in the end he decided not to have the overture performed because of its—his own words—"pretentious insipidity" -`much like the mysterious lack of attention in support of United States *Congress*ional action on the solution of the question of separated children seeking asylum, a hodge podge of conflicting orders attached as amendments here and there - neither of which have been addressed for decades gone by.

In the early morning hours of 28 October 1971, the opera house burned to the ground. Detention for asylum seekers and other detainees has risen to a billion dollar a year industry in the last decade.