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Yahoo
7 days ago
- Climate
- Yahoo
On This Date: A Once-Forgotten May Hurricane Struck Florida
A Civil War hurricane once made landfall in Florida before hurricane season started, and it wasn't widely known until a 21st century study brought it to light. On May 28, 1863, 162 years ago today, a Category 2 hurricane slammed ashore near Apalachicola, Florida. This is the first known May U.S. hurricane landfall on record. That was almost two weeks earlier than Hurricane Alma, which also made landfall in the Florida Panhandle on June 9, 1966, the next earliest U.S. hurricane landfall. The hurricane claimed 72 lives in Florida and another 38 lives at sea aboard the vessel Soler two days before landfall. A 2013 study by Michael Chenoweth and C.J. Mock rediscovered this once-forgotten Civil War-era U.S. hurricane. Poring through ship records, including those from the Union Navy blockading the Gulf Coast, as well as local newspaper accounts and other weather records, the study found a tropical storm formed on May 25, then turned north as a hurricane beginning on May 27, before its May 28 sunrise landfall. The hurricane was named "Amanda" after a Union ship driven ashore. According to the study, acting Volunteer Lieutenant George Welch claimed to see Confederate troops and, thus, ordered the ship to be abandoned. But a court the following month failed to turn up evidence of Confederate troops. It's a reminder that more impactful tropical storms and hurricanes can happen even this early in the calendar. Thirteen years ago today, Tropical Storm Beryl very nearly reached hurricane status when it came ashore near Jacksonville Beach just after midnight. Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.
Daily Maverick
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Maverick
Not your grandmother's Aida — Verdi's great work gets a science fiction spin
Cape Town Opera delivers a superb production of one of opera's true classics, Aida. This production reimagines the setting in an African futurist time and landscape. The Cape Town Opera's production of Giuseppe Verdi's classic opera Aida, now on at the Artscape Theatre until 31 May, receives a dramatic, modern spin, even as it stays faithful to the music and story of this great work. Sometimes operas can be overly fancy with the plots and subplots (and the music to go with such wrinkles and complications). But as conductor Kamal Khan explained to me, Aida is, at its heart, a simple story of a love triangle that goes way off track — but embedded in a struggle between two warring nations, along with espionage and international betrayals thrown in to give the storyline extra energy. Aida's origin story begins in the 1860s as the Egyptian khedive Isma'il Pasha was determined to make his heretofore recumbent nation, which had been an Ottoman satrapy for hundreds of years — but one with an extraordinarily long history of its civilisation — into an avatar of modernisation and a model for Africa and Asia. This was taking place just before the explosion of European colonisation in Africa and Asia that occurred from the 1880s onward. As the fates would have it, Egypt was becoming increasingly prosperous from its exports of fine quality cotton to European mills because of the American Civil War and the blockade of Confederate ports by the Union Navy that prevented cotton from being exported. Moreover, the French were constructing the Suez Canal on the edges of Egyptian territory, linking the Mediterranean and Red seas. This canal promised to give rise to faster, safer sea transport between Europe and South and East Asia — once ships began transiting the canal from 1870. And so, what's a khedive to do in the face of all of this excitement and progress? The right answer is to commission an opera from one of the world's finest composers, someone whose music would highlight Egypt's vast historical panorama and glorious past, and simultaneously mark Egypt's emergence as a wannabe modern power. Why not! Initially somewhat reluctant, Verdi eventually accepted the commission and produced one of the grandest of 19th-century grand operas. The work almost instantly became part of the repertoires of opera companies around the world. Productions have taken place somewhere around the globe every year since it premiered in 1871 in Cairo in Egypt's new opera house, and then in its European premiere in Milan, Italy. The Cairo production had been held up by the Franco-Prussian War as the costumes and sets were being fabricated in France. The Egypt of Aida is remarkably different from Mozart's Egypt in The Magic Flute. The latter is all about philosophical mysteries and Masonic symbols in an imaginary Egypt. By contrast, Verdi's Egypt came 70 years after Napoleon's Egyptian campaign, the discovery and successful translation of hieroglyphics via the Rosetta Stone, and the beginnings of serious archaeology. Verdi's Egypt was based, at least in part, on those early discoveries and interpretations of the culture of Egypt, transposed into the 19th-century operatic form. Of course, there are more recent operas situated in Africa, such as Philip Glass' Akhnaten and his Satyagraha, both John Adams' and Samuel Barber's Antony and Cleopatra, and one of the earliest operas, Dido and Aeneas, which takes place in Carthage in North Africa. South African composers, meanwhile, have created several operas about Nelson Mandela and one about Winnie Mandela, the precedent-setting 'Princess Magogo', as well as a clutch of short, one-act works ranging from the recording of Khoi-san legends to the death of Chris Hani. There certainly are a couple of seasons' worth of operas connected to Africa in this mix. The plot Aida's plot is pretty straightforward. Amneris, the princess of Egypt, is in love with Radames, a general. Meanwhile, Radames is head-over-heels in love with Aida, an Ethiopian princess, captured in a previous war, who is now a slave to Amneris. The Egyptians and Ethiopians are soon at war with each other yet again, and Radames is eventually selected as the general to lead the Egyptian army. He is a success, and the pharaoh promises him anything he desires. To the pharaoh's surprise, Radames' wish is to allow the Ethiopian POWs to go free, including, it turns out, Aida's father. This is not going to end well. Soon enough, Radames is trapped into betraying state secrets to the Ethiopian leader, who is waiting to meet his daughter, Aida, by the banks of the Nile. The Ethiopian's goal is to use his daughter's love for Radames to get him to compromise himself. Sure enough, Radames accidentally discloses the direction of the march by the Egyptian forces in their next attack — a security breach that lands him in enormous trouble (unlike US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth), given that it is a treasonous offence to betray military secrets. Then, when the secrets are compromised, Amneris attempts to get Radames' sentence commuted if he will marry her, but to no avail since he will not renounce his love for Aida. Thus, it is off to the tomb below the temple for him for a gruesome death, as there will be no escape from his incarceration. Astonishingly, though, Aida has hidden herself in that same tomb, and so they die together, professing a hopeless love for each other. Amneris, meanwhile, is left to bewail the reality that the man she loves is about to die. Along the way, the opera has two of the greatest marches in operatic history. Listen to the Triumphal March from Act 2: It includes some big dance moments, and great arias like Celeste Aida — which pretty much describes what the title says the opera is supposed to be about. Listen to Luciano Pavarotti singing this famous aria: There is also Leontyne Price's famous performance of O Patria Mia: Science fiction Almost every production of Aida has monumental, ancient Egyptian sets filled with pyramids and costumes to match. Some productions have even had live elephants, cheetahs and lions on stage — especially when they have been done in outdoor arenas. But this production is different. Artistic director Magdalene Minnaar has elected to turn this Aida into a production based on 'African futurism'. The sets have uncanny echoes of some signature science fiction films and television serials — Fritz Lang's trailblazing film Metropolis, but also Dune, The Time Tunnel, those Dwayne Johnson Scorpion films, and Luc Besson's The Fifth Element, among others. If you watch closely, there is a moment that echoes the denizens of the Star Wars cantina. The Egyptian soldiers owe something of their style to Star Trek's Borg or, perhaps, the clone warriors of the Star Wars universe — with their glowing red-laser pointer eyes. Minnaar admits she had a love of science fiction as a teen and still has a fascination with Dune — and her animation designers are said to share the same feelings. In this Aida there are no pyramids, temples, massive statues or sphinxes, but there is a mysterious ascending and descending, glowing triangle floating in space — perhaps a subtle reference to that Masonic business Mozart used in his Egyptian opera, maybe the pyramids, or perhaps a reachback to the idea that Aida is really about a love triangle gone really, really bad. The priests, to give Radames the edge in fighting the Ethiopians, offer him their blessings, and then hand him a magical weapon for the upcoming battle with the Ethiopians that is almost certainly meant to be some kind of nuclear device. Moreover, the backdrop often features stylised representations of atomic nuclei and mathematical equations, as well as planets in orbit around the Sun. This production is not your grandmother's Aida with the elephants and Egyptian symbols. This is a reimagining with a vengeance, even if, amazingly, none of this re-situating does damage to score, story or Antonio Ghislanzoni's libretto. Precision and dynamism In this production, conductor Kamal Khan brought precision and a dynamism to the entire performance, while the chorus, trained by Antoinette Huyssen, was uniformly excellent. The leads on opening night — Nobulumko Mngxekeza as Aida, Nonhlanhla Yende as Amneris, and Lukhanyo Moyake as Radames, and supporting cast members Conroy Scott as Amonasro, Garth Delport as the Egyptian king, Lonwabo Mose as Ramfis, Van Wyk Venter as the royal messenger and Khayakazi Madlala as the high priestess — all sang beautifully. Offering any criticisms seems almost churlish. While most of the costuming was exciting, Aida's was the least effective from among the leads, especially in comparison to Amneris' unorthodox make-up and costumes (with a possible reachback to Grace Jones). While Mngxekeza's singing was superb, her and Radames' love for each other seemed a bit pallid in its physical expression, in contrast to Amneris' clear obsession with her hero and would-be husband. Finally, choreographer Gregory Maqoma's innovative movements for the dancers from the Jazzart Dance Theatre could serve the opera's action even better if their entrances integrated them more smoothly into the ongoing action, as opposed to almost separate set pieces. Maqoma is well known for his precision of movement in his works, but his decision to allow the dancers to act more individually and naturally might be refined still further. On the whole, these are small criticisms of an ambitious, beautifully sung production. Verdi is said to have responded to a newspaper reporter's question about what his theory of opera was, with the words, 'The seats should be filled.' Artscape's seats for this opera should be filled by anyone who wants to stretch their musical experiences — or just enjoy a really fine production. One final word about Verdi. He was not just a first-tier composer. He was a politician and served as a senator in the new Italian state, post-1870. One of his lasting contributions was to spearhead musical education for everyone — in part, at least, to ensure concert seats were full. His efforts should be echoed in contemporary South Africa — this is a country in which music plays such an important part in so many people's lives, after all. DM
Yahoo
28-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
From the Statesman archives: Walsh family keeps popping up in compelling Austin history
Some family names pop up with regularity in the American-Statesman archives. Walsh is one of them. In this column on April 20, members of the Walsh family were recorded as selling their land in what became Davenport Ranch in the Westlake area to Osceola Heard Davenport, a wealthy Rio Grande Valley widow of an oilman. That 1947 sale was part of the background for a story about the devastating 1961 Davenport Ranch brush fire, which still haunts some residents of that rugged country. More on Austin history: From the Statesman archives: April 1961 wildfire devastated Davenport Ranch Before that, on Feb. 24, this column covered the disastrous collapse of the Austin Dam during a Colorado River flood in 1900. Much of the land on either side of the dam, in what is now Tarrytown, Westlake and Davenport Ranch, belonged to the Walsh family, who manufactured lime from the limestone over fires fueled by the abundant mountain junipers in the area. And on March 23, the city of Austin honored the family patriarch, William Walsh (1837-1908) with an interpretive marker at Walsh Boat Landing. This scenic spot on Lake Austin that is known for its fishing, boating and picnicking was originally dedicated in William's honor in 1957. "William Walsh grew up in Limerick and County Kerry, Ireland, but left his home country during the Great Famine," the new historical marker reads. "Following several years of service in the British Navy, young William came to the U.S. just before the Civil War and joined the Union Navy. Afterward, he assisted in building federal forts in Texas, including Fort McKavett and Fort Clark, among others." Walsh and his descendants produced lime for structures throughout Texas at lime kilns located in Austin, Round Rock and McNeil. Many readers will remember signs for the Round Rock White Lime Company. It was one of the largest lime manufacturers in Texas during its peak operations. In addition, Walsh lent his name to a settlement near McNeil which has not appeared on regular highway maps more than 80 years, according to the Handbook of Texas Online. "In the late 1800s, his company supplied stone and lime to buildings, including the Texas State Capitol, St. Edward's University and St. Mary's Cathedral in Austin," the marker reads. "Known for its purity, Walsh's lime won the Gold Medal at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair." Were those news narratives — fire, flood and a new historical marker — not enough, several members of the Walsh family contacted me with some more amazing stories, some of them quite sad. "William Walsh had lived and processed lime at his place above the dam since 1874, before that at Mt. Bonnell," writes Chris Walsh. "Family stories say he testified in front of the City Council about the unsound nature of the dam. He suggested relieving pressure by irrigating downstream." While no family members were among the reported dead or missing, the conditions after the flood prompted the Walshes to move. "Sure enough the dam broke and the family stories abound about the unhealthy conditions along the river after the break," Chris Walsh continues. "One child died of typhoid, another died of tuberculosis, and with the death of the third child, they moved up to their quarries to around Round Rock. Much of the family remained in Austin." Walsh Boat Landing was the site of the family's homestead both before and after the dam collapse in 1900. "William Walsh continued conducting business and attending church in Austin until his death in 1908," writes Chuck Munson, another history-minded family member. "Much of the Tarrytown property stayed in the family but the Depression and subdivisions eroded most of the holdings until my grandfather, Edward Walsh, worked with then Mayor Tom Miller to deed about four and one half acres to the city in 1957. "The city determined the property would be ideal for boat operations on the lake." Send your tips or questions about Austin history to mbarnes@ This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Walsh family of Austin and Round Rock left deep imprint on the area
