Les Cattleyas

Dans mon jardin d’hiver
les cattleyas blanche-neige
et un cœur bleu d’acier


 - Elisabeth Serafimovski

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Photo: Jess Rola

Allez au Cirque

Je suis un homme de cirque; c'est moi qui a trouvé la femme à trois têtes pour Barnum, et trouvé le seul éléphant qui peut jouer 'Sur le Pont d'Avignon' au piano.

- Lola Montes


LES CHATS

Les amoureux fervents et les savants austères
Aiment également, dans leur mûre saison,
Les chats puissants et doux, orgueil de la maison,
Qui comme eux sont frileux et comme eux sédentaires.
Amis de la science et de la volupté
Ils cherchent le silence et l'horreur des ténèbres;
L'Erèbe les eût pris pour ses coursiers funèbres,
S'ils pouvaient au servage incliner leur fierté.
Ils prennent en songeant les nobles attitudes
Des grands sphinx allongés au fond des solitudes,
Qui semblent s'endormir dans un rêve sans fin;
Leurs reins féconds sont pleins d'étincelles magiques,
Et des parcelles d'or, ainsi qu'un sable fin,
Etoilent vaguement leurs prunelles mystiques.
— Charles Baudelaire

Visitez le Cabaret

Notre chére amie Madame Grace Andreacchi a ses propres idées sur le CABARET DE LA PEUR. Vaut le visite!

Bienvenue au Cabaret

En la forêt d'Ennuyeuse Tristesse

 

En la forêt d'Ennuyeuse Tristesse,
Un jour m'advint qu'à par moi cheminoye,
Et rencontrai l'Amoureuse Déesse
Qui m'appela, demandant où j'alloye.
Je répondis que, par Fortune, estoye
Is en exil en ce bois, long temps a,
Et qu'à bon droit appeler me pouvoye
L'homme égaré qui ne sait où il va.

En souriant, par sa trés grande humblesse,
E répondit : " Ami, si je savoye
Pourquoi tu es mis en cette détresse,
A mon pouvoir volontiers t'aideroye ;
Car, jà piéça, je mis ton coeur en voye
De tout plaisir, ne sais qui l'en ôta ;
Or me déplaît qu'à présent je te voye
L'homme égaré qui ne sait où il va.

Hélas ! dis-je, souveraine Princesse,
On fait savez, pourquoi le vous diroye ?
C'est par la Mort qui fait à tous rudesse,
Qui m'a tollu celle que tant amoye,
En qui était tout l'espoir que j'avoye,
Qui me guidait, si bien m'accompagna
En son vivant, que point ne me trouvoye
L'homme égaré qui ne sait où il va.

" Aveugle suis, ne sais où aller doye ;
De mon bâton, afin que ne fourvoye,
Je vais tâtant mon chemin çà et là ;
C'est grand pitié qu'il convient que je soye
L'homme égaré qui ne sait où il va ! "

A Little Night Music

Im Grunde wollen wir Klavier sein, sagte er [Glenn Gould], nicht Menschen sein, sondern Klavier sein, zeitlebens wollen wir Klavier und nicht Mensch sein, entfliehen dem Menschen, der wir sind, um ganz Klavier zu werden, was aber misslingen muss, woran wir aber nicht glauben wollen, so er.

- THOMAS BERNHARD, DER UNTERGEHER

It is, in short, music which observes neither end nor beginning, music with neither real climax nor real resolution, music which, like Baudelaires's lovers, "rests lightly on the wings of the unchecked wind." It has, then, unity through intuitive perception, unity born of craft and scrutiny, mellowed by mastery achieved, and revealed to us here, as so rarely in art, in the vision of subconscious design exulting upon a pinnacle of potency.

- GLENN GOULD, NOTES ON THE GOLDBERG VARIATIONS OF J.S.BACH

He has the true pianist's temperament, and I can only imagine him happy in the embrace of that lumbering exo-skeleton, that brute music-machine which he is accustomed to abuse at will. From a close engagement with anything alive I believe he would shrink. His is not so much the air of a man who has never had a woman, as of a boy who has not yet even wanted one. A certain mischief goes out of us once we take up with women. But then, if he is not her lover, what is he?

- GRACE ANDREACCHI, SCARABOCCHIO

Au Theatre Des Sons Imaginaires

Thomyris, Queen of the Amazons came on dressed in a very equivocal manner; for, in order to give her a martial look, she had her petticoats trussed up in front above her knees, which were very discernible through her black breeches. However strange this appeared to me, the audience clapped violently, as they did constantly at the worst and most absurd things in the piece. There was a great deal of religion in it, and such anachronisms, that they talked of J. C. and the Trinity, nor were Free-will and Predestination forgotten; and when Cyrus is dying of the wound he received in battle, he is examined by a Jewish priest, a principal character in the play, as his confessor, concerning his religious principles, and he makes to him a profession of faith.

-CHARLES BURNEY, THE PRESENT STATE OF MUSIC IN FRANCE AND ITALY

Nichts vom Triumph mir! Nichts vom Rosenfeste!

Es ruft die Schlacht noch einmal mich ins Feld. 

Den jungen trotz'gen Kriegsgott bänd'g' ich mir, 

Gefährtinnen, zehntausend Sonnen dünken, 

Zu einem Glutball eingeschmelzt, so glanzvoll 

Nicht, als ein Sieg, ein Sieg mir über ihn.

- HEINRICH VON KLEIST, PENTHISILEA

With all zeal mighty Bellerophontes seized the winged steed [Pegasos], setting between his jaws the soothing charm, and mounting him, in his bronze panoply played him in sport, to try his pace. And once [in Lykia], with him, he smote the Amazones, from the chill bosom of the lonely air, that archered host of women-kind.

- PINDAR, OLYPIAN ODE 13 

One God, One Farinelli!

Thursday, August 23.[1770] It will give pleasure to every lover of music, especially to those who have been so happy as to have heard him, to learn that Signor Farinelli still lives, and is in good health and spirits. I found him much younger in appearance than I expected. He is tall and thin, but seems by no means infirm. Hearing that I had a letter for him, he was so obliging as to come to me this morning at Padre Martini's, in whose library I spent a great part of my time here. Upon my observing, in the course of our conversation, that I had long been ambitious of seeing two persons, become so eminent by different abilities in the same art, and that chief business at Bologna was to gratify that ambition, Signor Farinelli, pointing to P. Martini, said, " What he is doing will last, but the little that I have done is already gone and forgotten." I told him, that in England there were still many who remembered his performance so well, that they could bear to hear no other singer; that the
whole kingdom continued to resound his fame, and I was sure tradition would hand it down to the latest posterity.

*

He told me, that for the first ten years of his residence at the court of Spain, during the life of Philip the Vth, he sung every night to that monarch the same four airs, of which two were composed by Hasse, Pallido il sole, and Per questo dolce amplesso. I forget the others, but one was a minuet which he used to vary at his pleasure.

*

He likewise confirmed to me the truth of the following extraordinary story, which I had often heard and never before credited. Senesino and Farinelli, when in England together, being engaged at different theatres on the same night, had not an opportunity of hearing each other, till, by one of those sudden stage-revolutions which frequently happen, yet are always unexpected, they were both employed to sing on the same stage. Senesino had the part of a furious tyrant to represent, and Farinelli that of an unfortunate hero in chains: but, in the course of the first song, he so softened the obdurate heart of the enraged tyrant, that Senesino, forgetting his stage-character, ran to Farinelli and embraced him in his own.
- CHARLES BURNEY, THE PRESENT STATE OF MUSIC IN FRANCE AND ITALY