Latest news with #Turandot
Evening Standard
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Evening Standard
Cecil Beaton's Garden Party at the The Garden Museum review: a chance to wallow in Beaton's charm and gaiety
This little show is his life told through flowers. There's a fabulous photo of Rex Whistler at the outset, reclining with a mandolin and knee breeches, which sets the tone. Then there's his early life, taking pictures of his mother and sisters in the gardens; an account of his years at Ashcombe; his royal photography - and clever Cecil managed simultaneously to keep Wallis Simpson and Queen Elizabeth onside in 1937, making the latter look less dumpy than ethereal in the garden with a parasol. There are his opera and ballet sets, including a model for the stage for Turandot (we are reminded that his war work including a stint in the Far East which he put to use artistically) and there are some of his costume designs for My Fair Lady – plus the Oscar statuette he got for his costume work on the film. There are some charming letters to him from his gardener, letting him know how the prized delphiniums were getting on.
Boston Globe
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Stephen Mo Hanan, who played three roles in ‘Cats,' dies at 78
'As a matter of fact, I've brought my concertina,' he recalled telling Nunn in an interview with The Washington Post in 1982. 'He said, 'Give me something in Italian.' Well, I've never had a problem with shyness. I sang 'Funiculi, Funicula.'' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Mr. Hanan was ultimately cast in three parts: Bustopher Jones, a portly cat, and the dual role of Asparagus, an aging theater cat, who, while reminiscing, transforms (with help from an inflatable costume) into a former role, Growltiger, a tough pirate, and performs a parody of Giacomo Puccini's 'Turandot.' Advertisement During rehearsals, Hanan kept a detailed journal, which he published in 2002 as 'A Cat's Diary.' In an entry about the second day of rehearsal, he described an assignment from Nunn: to 'pick a cartoon cat we know of, withdraw to ourselves and prepare a vignette of that cat, then return to the circle and each in turn will present.' Advertisement He continued: 'I choose Fritz the Cat,' the Robert Crumb character, 'making a pass at some kitty. Watching the others is a gas -- people's individualities are beginning to emerge.' Mr. Hanan and another cast member, Harry Groener, were nominated for the Tony Award for best featured actor in a musical. They both lost; tap dancer Charles (Honi) Coles won for 'My One and Only.' In the years following 'Cats,' Mr. Hanan's many roles included Moonface Martin in 'Anything Goes,' at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis; the double role of Voltaire and Dr. Pangloss in 'Candide,' at the Huntington Theater in Boston; and another dual role, Mr. Darling and Captain Hook, in 'Peter Pan,' on Broadway and on tour. He also portrayed villainous innkeeper Thenardier in 'Les Miserables' in London. In 1999, Mr. Hanan created a stage role of his own: Al Jolson, the popular vaudevillian who performed in blackface, sang on Broadway, and starred in 'The Jazz Singer,' the pioneering sound motion picture. 'Jolson & Co.,' which Mr. Hanan wrote with Jay Berkow, was staged off-Broadway, at the York Theater Company. Jolson 'was pure id,' Mr. Hanan, who bore a physical resemblance to him, told Harvard magazine in 2002, when the show was revived at the Century Center for the Performing Arts in New York. 'He didn't censor himself, neither his joy nor his rage. With Jolson you can be completely over the top; you have to be. His personality demands that kind of size." 'Jolson & Co.' re-creates a 1946 radio interview with Barry Gray as a way of looking back on his remarkable life. Mr. Hanan sang many of the songs Jolson was known for, including 'Swanee' and 'California, Here I Come.' Advertisement Reviewing the show in New York magazine, John Simon praised Mr. Hanan's performance as 'mostly impersonation but, as such, unbeatable.' He added, 'On top of the Jolson looks, the incarnator has absorbed all the vocal, facial, and kinetic mannerisms as if he had stolen the man's very soul.' Stephen Hanan Kaplan was born on Jan. 7, 1947, in Washington. His mother, Lottie (Klein) Kaplan, was a high school English teacher; his father, Jonah Kaplan, was a pharmacist. While attending Harvard College, Stephen performed in theatrical productions at the Loeb Drama Center and with the Hasty Pudding Club. He acquired the nickname Mo on a trip to Bermuda during college, after a friend, future Broadway librettist John Weidman, observed that his outfit made him look like 'some guy named Mo who cleans cabanas in the Catskills,' Mr. Hanan told the website TheaterMania in 2002. After graduating in 1968 with a bachelor's degree in English literature, he studied for a year at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art on a Fulbright fellowship. Back in New York, he had difficulty landing roles, so in 1971 he moved to San Francisco, where he lived on a commune and spent six years singing for money, mostly at the ferry terminal, which earned him enough to spend winters in Mexico and Guatemala. Once, outside the stage door at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, he encountered Luciano Pavarotti, who had just performed in Giuseppe Verdi's 'Un Ballo in Maschera,' and summoned the nerve to sing for the great tenor. 'I raced to the money note and he, exclaiming 'Che voce d'oro' -- or 'What a golden voice' -- beckoned me over amid applause,' Mr. Hanan wrote in an unpublished essay. Advertisement After returning to New York, he landed small parts in New York Shakespeare Festival productions of 'All's Well That Ends Well' and 'The Taming of the Shrew' in Central Park in 1978. (Around that time, he dropped his surname and began using his middle name instead, because there was another actor with a similar name.) In 1980, director Wilford Leach cast him as Samuel, the second in command to Kline's Pirate King, in the Shakespeare in the Park production of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operetta 'The Pirates of Penzance,' which also starred Linda Ronstadt. Mr. Hanan stayed with the show when it moved to Broadway in 1981. In 2006, Mr. Hanan moved up in rank to play the Major-General in a Yiddish-language version of 'Pirates' (called 'Di Yam Gazlonim!'), put on by the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene at the Jewish Community Center in New York (now the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan). Allen Lewis Rickman, the director, recalled that Mr. Hanan did not know Yiddish and had to learn his lines phonetically. 'He was quite a character and very entertaining, one of those people who you know is a real pro,' Rickman said in an interview. 'He had a clownish streak -- that was his first instinct -- but not in a scene-stealing way.' This article originally appeared in
New York Times
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Stephen Mo Hanan, Who Played Three Roles in ‘Cats,' Dies at 78
Stephen Mo Hanan, a vibrant performer who sang arias and other music as a busker in San Francisco before playing Kevin Kline's lieutenant in the acclaimed 1981 Broadway production of 'The Pirates of Penzance' and three felines in the original Broadway cast of 'Cats,' died on April 3 at his home in Manhattan. He was 78. Gary Widlund, his husband and only immediate survivor, said the cause was a heart attack. At his audition for 'Cats,' Mr. Hanan (pronounced HAN-un) told Andrew Lloyd Webber, the composer, and Trevor Nunn, the director, that he had spent several years singing and accompanying himself on a concertina at a ferry terminal at the foot of Market Street in San Francisco. 'As a matter of fact, I've brought my concertina,' he recalled telling Mr. Nunn in an interview with The Washington Post in 1982. 'He said, 'Give me something in Italian.' Well, I've never had a problem with shyness. I sang 'Funiculi, Funicula.'' Mr. Hanan was ultimately cast in three parts: Bustopher Jones, a portly cat, and the dual role of Asparagus, an aging theater cat, who, while reminiscing, transforms (with help from an inflatable costume) into a former role, Growltiger, a tough pirate, and performs a parody of Puccini's 'Turandot.' During rehearsals, Mr. Hanan kept a detailed journal, which he published in 2002 as 'A Cat's Diary.' In an entry about the second day of rehearsal, he described an assignment from Mr. Nunn: to 'pick a cartoon cat we know of, withdraw to ourselves and prepare a vignette of that cat, then return to the circle and each in turn will present.' He continued: 'I choose Fritz the Cat,' the Robert Crumb character, 'making a pass at some kitty. Watching the others is a gas — people's individualities are beginning to emerge.' He and another cast member, Harry Groener, were both nominated for the Tony Award for best featured actor in a musical. They both lost; the tap dancer Charles (Honi) Coles won for 'My One and Only.' In the years following 'Cats,' Mr. Hanan's many roles included Moonface Martin in 'Anything Goes,' at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis; the double role of Voltaire and Dr. Pangloss in 'Candide,' at the Huntington Theater in Boston; and another dual role, Mr. Darling and Captain Hook, in 'Peter Pan,' on Broadway and on tour. He also portrayed the villainous innkeeper Thenardier in 'Les Miserables' in London. In 1999, Mr. Hanan created a stage role of his own: Al Jolson, the popular vaudevillian who performed in blackface, sang on Broadway and starred in 'The Jazz Singer,' the pioneering sound motion picture. 'Jolson & Co.,' which Mr. Hanan wrote with Jay Berkow, was staged Off Broadway, at the York Theater Company. Al Jolson 'was pure id,' Mr. Hanan, who bore a physical resemblance to him, told Harvard magazine in 2002, when the show was revived at the Century Center for the Performing Arts in Manhattan. 'He didn't censor himself, neither his joy nor his rage. With Jolson you can be completely over the top; you have to be. His personality demands that kind of size.' 'Jolson & Co.' recreates a 1946 radio interview with Barry Gray as a way of looking back on his remarkable life. Mr. Hanan sang many of the songs Mr. Jolson was known for, including 'Swanee' and 'California, Here I Come.' Reviewing the show in New York magazine, John Simon praised Mr. Hanan's performance as 'mostly impersonation but, as such, unbeatable.' He added, 'On top of the Jolson looks, the incarnator has absorbed all the vocal, facial, and kinetic mannerisms as if he had stolen the man's very soul.' Mr. Hanan was born Stephen Hanan Kaplan on Jan. 7, 1947, in Washington. His mother, Lottie (Klein) Kaplan, was a high school English teacher; his father, Jonah Kaplan, was a pharmacist. While attending Harvard College, Stephen performed in theatrical productions at the Loeb Drama Center and with the Hasty Pudding Club. He acquired the nickname Mo on a trip to Bermuda during college, after a friend, the future Broadway librettist John Weidman, observed that his outfit made him look like 'some guy named Mo who cleans cabanas in the Catskills,' Mr. Hanan told the website TheaterMania in 2002. After graduating in 1968 with a bachelor's degree in English literature, he studied for a year at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art on a Fulbright fellowship. Back in New York, he had difficulty landing roles, so in 1971 he moved to San Francisco, where he lived on a commune and spent six years singing for money, mostly at the ferry terminal, which earned him enough to spend winters in Mexico and Guatemala. Once, outside the stage door at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, he encountered Luciano Pavarotti, who had just performed in Verdi's 'Un Ballo in Maschera,' and summoned the nerve to sing for the great tenor. 'I raced to the money note and he, exclaiming 'Che voce d'oro' — or 'What a golden voice' — beckoned me over amid applause,' Mr. Hanan wrote in an unpublished essay. After returning to New York again, he landed small parts in New York Shakespeare Festival productions of 'All's Well That Ends Well' and 'The Taming of the Shrew' in Central Park in 1978. (Around that time, he dropped his surname and began using his middle name instead, because there was another actor with a similar name.) In 1980, the director Wilford Leach cast him as Samuel, the second in command to Mr. Kline's Pirate King, in the Shakespeare in the Park production of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operetta 'The Pirates of Penzance,' which also starred Linda Ronstadt. Mr. Hanan stayed with the show when it moved to Broadway in 1981. Rex Smith, who played Frederic, the male romantic lead, said in an interview that Mr. Hanan 'embodied all that was required to be the Pirate King's lieutenant, and for that you had to stand and deliver every night — if you're not going to be keelhauled.' In 2006, Mr. Hanan moved up in rank to play the Major-General in a Yiddish-language version of 'Pirates' (called 'Di Yam Gazlonim!'), put on by the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene at the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan (now the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan). Allen Lewis Rickman, the director, of that show recalled that Mr. Hanan did not know Yiddish and had to learn his lines phonetically. 'He was quite a character and very entertaining, one of those people who you know is a real pro,' Mr. Rickman said in an interview. 'He had a clownish streak — that was his first instinct — but not in a scene-stealing way.'
National Observer
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- National Observer
MOVIES: Surprise! There's a very good movie from Marvel this week
Documentaries are big generally these days and in Canada right now specifically as two big festivals overlap. Hot Docs in Toronto is close to winding up this year's run, while DOXA in Vancouver has just started. At Hot Docs you can still catch repeats of the films that were the most popular with the audience, including: Ai Weiwei's reworking of the opera Turandot, Marriage Cops who settle domestic disputes in India, The Last Ambassador who advocates for Afghani woman, Come See Me in the Good Light about one woman dealing with terminal cancer and How Deep Is Your Love (for your planet you might say) as scientists find and study new species in the oceans and worry about deep-sea mining. For DOXA you can see what's playing and when by going here: Bonjour Tristesse: 3 Nechako: 4 Mr. Nobody Against Putin: 3 ½ The Shrouds: 2 ½ THUNDERBOLTS*: That asterisk in the title actually means something. Stick around through the end credits for a clue and watch the entire film for a very enjoyable return to what Marvel movies used to be like. They've gotten repetitive over the years, understandably so because this is the 36 th of them. But this is fresh and breathes new life in several ways. There's a big focus on interpersonal relationships this time. A rag tag group of characters gathered from previous movies and TV off-shoots have to learn to ditch their differences and work together. Not unusual, but they do it with humor and struggle. Character building is deeper than usual. They have regrets over what they've done before, particularly Yelena who was trained as an assassin. She's played by Florence Pugh in a standout performance and even a grand bit of stunt work. That's really her in the opening scene dropping off the second-tallest building on earth. She survives and joins up with these Marvel characters: Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) and her dad Red Guardian (David Harbour) because Valentina, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, is trying to kill them all. They had worked for her at some point and she has to eliminate evidence to save her job as CIA director. Congress is trying to impeach her because of a secret research business she runs on the side. With her help she figures the characters will just kill each other, except for one extra who shows up ('I'm just Bob') and will turn out to be a key part of the story. He's played by Lewis Pullman and is the focus of a lot of humor as the others try to figure out who this nobody is and why he's there. The story moves along briskly under the direction of Jake Schreier who is a former musician and has directed music videos. There's action, as you'd expect, but not as frequent as before and the story gets room to develop. A couple of giant set pieces are thrilling though, notably a smash-and-crash street scene involving a hammerhead crane, a helicopter, trucks and cars and people running. As a film it's more credible than the usual at Marvel: some bad guy trying to destroy the world or even the universe. (In theaters) 4 out of 5 BONJOUR TRISTESSE: A popular French novel in 1954, a Hollywood movie in 1958, it's back, as evocative as ever but maybe gentler than you might expect. Growing up and coming of age stories are often edgier these days. This one plays relatively easily in the sun and beauty of the south of France while touching on some tough subjects, competition between women being one, alongside the main regard, the maturing of one young woman and her world view. Françoise Sagan was only 18 when she wrote the novel and her view of things struck a chord. Canadian director Durga Chew-Bose depicts it well without modernizing it to give it more edge. You may wish it were harder in tone, although Sagan's own son has endorsed it as true to her vision. Lily McInerny plays Cécile who comes to spend the summer with her father played by Claes Bang. He's a widower but hardly gloomy. His latest lover (Nailia Harzoune) is there with him and two things bring friction into this sunny life. First is the arrival of an old friend of his (Chloë Sevigny), a designer of stylish clothes and therefore a classy individual. She works to maneuver his lover aside but Cécile feels she's displacing her too. She takes up with a boy who lives nearby, who not only seduces her but has eyes on dad's lover too. Cécile acts out, through her mischievous nature and newly-recognized selfish streak. Quite a summer and a keen study of one young woman in this Canada/Germany co-production filmed in France. As one woman says of her 'She is imagining what she looks like to us as practice for when she wants to be seen.' (Select theaters) 3 out of 5 Two documentaries ... NECHAKO: IT WILL BE A BIG RIVER AGAIN: Here's another fine example of the films coming along these days about Indigenous issues here in Canada, by Indigenous filmmakers. Lyana Patrick is from the Stellat'en First Nation (which is about in the middle of British Columbia). She lives in Vancouver but went back to document the long fight that has gone on about the Nechako River. It has been her peoples' main source of food (salmon) but an aluminum smelter built over near the Pacific Coast harmed it immensely. Its flow was reversed in part to supply a power dam. 'Wasteland' was turned 'into an industrial empire' says a newsreel clip. The people saw it differently. Water was severely reduced where the salmon bred and their numbers plummeted. Land elsewhere flooded, roads were built and other industries moved in. One person in the film described the 'cumulative effect of all this progress' as 'heaping evil on top of evil.' But they couldn't go to court to fight the company, Rio Tinto Aluminium, now Rio Tinto Alcan. In the 1950s it was illegal for them to hire a lawyer and sue. Recently they did get to court. They argued how important the river is to them. As one person in the film says 'Our people were the healthiest, the strongest the most resilient.' They wanted the water restored because as we can see in the film a lot of the salmon grounds are now dry and wildlife trails have been broken up. The court said don't blame the company; two levels of government let them do it. That was appealed and there's a tense scene as people wait to hear the result. In their mind, the case is still not over. We hear much about their pride and resolve. 'We survive everything and come back home,' says one in this very well-made film. (DOXA Film Festival) 4 out of 5 MR. NOBODY AGAINST PUTIN: Here's a nervy but also very informative look inside Russia and tangentially at the effects there of Mr. Putin's war on Ukraine. Officially it's a 'special military operation' remember. Schools were ordered to refer it that way and to indoctrinate the children with official information about it. That Ukraine is run by radicals, nationalists and neo-Nazis. That Crimea 'joined' Russia willingly. And so on. Teachers were ordered in a 'New Federal Patriotic Education Policy' to have the children sing songs, write poems and send letters to support the war. 'Commanders don't win wars,' we see Putin say. 'Teachers win wars.' Not so, says Pasha, a teacher in the industrially-scarred city of Karabash. It's been named as one of the most toxic places on earth but that's not the key thing here: it's Pasha's need to fight back against the intrusion on his freedom to teach. He starts photographing all on his cell phone, including cute children reciting propaganda, marching patriotically and singing loudly. Then when more young men are called up, their training and even hair cuts. And his own thoughts spoken right into the camera: that Putin's war is not for Communism but for his own power. And to the young recruits he recalls national heroes and says 'maybe one day you can be a dead soldier too.' We get his passion, a good view of how the regime exerts power and how Pasha's material got out. It's a Danish-Czech co-production directed by David Borenstein and won a big award at the Sundance Film Festival. Here, it's at both DOXA and Hot Docs. 3½ out of 5 THE SHROUDS: Here's a very odd take on the subject of grief. It's from David Cronenberg, one of our most celebrated filmmakers, and was apparently driven by his grief over the loss of his wife. But what a weird response it is. A businessman played by Vincent Cassel invents a video system that allows a person to look inside a grave and still feel close to a lost loved one. You check in now and then and see the stages of the body's decomposition. The cemetery has terminals across its whole area. Cassell's wife is played by Diane Kruger and thankfully we see much more of her alive in flashbacks than decaying in her grave. Still the idea is creepy. It reminds of a similar technology imagined by Cronenberg in his early film Videodrome but here he holds back the body horror excess he's known for and concentrates on grief. Kruger also plays a sister and Guy Pearce plays a computer hacker. The film drifts off-topic into conspiracy and ecology matters thereby creating a jumbled narrative. It plays very slowly and lets your mind wander. To him it's personal. Not, I imagine, to a lot of people. (In theaters, for a week already) 2 ½ out of 5
Epoch Times
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Epoch Times
The Power of Puccini's ‘Nessun Dorma'
Last year's presidential election was decided in the closing minutes of the closing day of the 2024 Republican National Convention (RNC). It was then that tenor Christopher Macchio proclaimed on behalf of Donald Trump: 'I will win! I will win! I will win!' He did not say those words in English. In fact, he didn't say them at all. He sang them, in Italian: 'Vincerò! Vincerò! Vincerò!' Christopher Macchio, lyric tenor, performs onstage as former President Donald J. Trump claps at a rally at Butler Farm Show in Butler, Pa., on Oct. 5, 2024. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times The words' meaning may have flown past most at the convention, but the music's meaning did not. It was the soaring melody of Puccini's famous tenor aria 'Nessun dorma,' from his opera 'Turandot.' Who could lose after such a dramatic proclamation of victory? 'Nessun dorma,' translated as 'no one sleeps,' is sung by the character of Calaf and refers to the sleepless night endured by him and the opera's other characters as they await the dawn when Princess Turandot will either be wed—or kill everyone in sight. (Spoiler alert: She gets married.) Potent in its compactness, the aria lasts a mere three minutes in most performances, yet it conveys an entire night of anticipation, as indeed for members of the RNC; it suggested the many trying months ahead. Something in the way its melody climbs, and particularly the reiterations of 'Vincerò' on successively higher notes, ending with a high B that hangs precipitously and for an extended time until at last it drops one note to a high A, which, in many performances, seems to last forever. From Opera to Pop Culture 'Nessun dorma' was one of the very last pieces of music composed by Giacomo Puccini. He died in 1924, before completing the score of 'Turandot,' and the version of the opera performed today was completed by another composer. Though it has been around since 1926, when 'Turandot' was premiered, and though it has been a favorite of many a tenor since, it was Luciano Pavarotti who, at the opening festivities of the 1990 World Cup, introduced it to contemporary audiences. Pavarotti first sang it solo, then repeated it along with fellow tenors Plácido Domingo and José Carreras, beginning the trio that would become one of the best-known classical singing ensembles of the last 50 years, The Three Tenors. Related Stories 6/28/2024 7/20/2024 A promotional poster for Giacomo Puccini's opera "Turandot," on April 25, 1926. Public Domain 'Nessun dorma' subsequently became a part of pop culture. It was sung by other operatic tenors, of course, but was also performed by such unlikely singers as Aretha Franklin. Featured in many movies, 'Nessun dorma' came to embody the very idea of the tenor aria and almost to symbolize opera itself. What makes it so special? What about Puccini's arias in general attract us? Something Is Revealed In Thomas Mann's 1924 novel, 'The Magic Mountain,' protagonist Hans Castorp is caught in a snowstorm that threatens to end his life. In a state of half-delusion, he looks back on episodes from his life. A musical memory 'Hans Castorp had been privileged to hear a world-famous singer, an Italian tenor, from whose throat the power of grace-filled art had poured over the hearts of men. He had held a high note – beautiful from the very first. And then gradually, from moment to moment, the passionate tone had opened up, swelled, unfolded, grown ever brighter and more radiant. It was as if veils, visible to no one before, were falling away, one by one – and now the last, or so they thought, revealing the purest, most intense light, and then one more, the ultimate, and then, incredibly, the absolute last, releasing a glory shimmering with tears and a brilliance so lavish that a hollow sound of rapture had gone up from the audience.' The description fits 'Nessun dorma,' which was still two years from being heard by anyone outside Puccini's immediate circle. It embodies the late Romantic feeling of the aria and, in particular, Puccini's way with composing them. Many of Puccini's most famous arias are at first factual, then revelatory. At the start, they state a simple condition, as in the condition of wakeful anticipation in 'Nessun dorma.' In 'Un bel di vedremo' from 'Madama Butterfly,' it is faith in the return of the character's husband. 'E lucevan le stelle' from 'Tosca' finds a man awaiting his execution, despairing that he has lost the woman he loved. Marcelo Alvarez as Calaf in Puccini's "Turandot." Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera Then, the emotions open up, as the musical range widens and the voice climbs ever higher. Something is revealed. For Calaf in 'Turandot,' victory appears before him. As the high notes roll out, he is not merely wishing to win, he knows he will win. For the title character of 'Madama Butterfly,' the fact of her faith reveals, as the music builds, a core of devotion. That she will be tragically betrayed does not alter this. And as the young revolutionary in 'Tosca' faces the fact that he will die in despair, his high notes reveal to him and to us that he has never before loved life so deeply. All this is conveyed in the words of the arias, but it is exalted to something sacred by the music. All of us live life on two levels. We work and eat and sleep and manage our affairs, but, behind it all, is the hidden knowledge of our connections to each other and to life and divinity. We know things we do not know we know. At certain moments, this truth is revealed. 'Nessun dorma' and other Puccini arias portray these revelations, and with the knowledge of them, we may, at last, get some sleep. What arts and culture topics would you like us to cover? Please email ideas or feedback to
