Die Nacht vor Weihnachten – Von Nikolaj Gogol

In dem ukrainischen Dorf Dikanka ist einiges aus dem Lot in der Nacht vor Weihnachten. Die Hexe Ssolocha stiehlt eine Handvoll Sterne vom Himmel, um sich für das Fest zu schmücken; der Teufel mit dem sie im Bunde steht, vergreift sich gar an der arglos über das Dorf ziehenden Mondscheibe. Noch seltsamer aber ist die Verwirrung, die in dem frommen und rechtschaffenen Schmied Wakula vorgeht: Aus Liebe zu der schönen Oxana läßt er sich zu dem Versprechen hinreißen, binnen einer Nacht das schönste Paar gestickter Ballschuhe aus dem Petersburger Palast der Zarin herbeizuschaffen. Es bedarf einiger List und Zauberei, ehe Wakula sein Versprechen einlösen kann. – Bayerischer Rundfunk 1971

https://ia801701.us.archive.org/1/items/die_nacht_vor_weihnachten_1971/die_nacht_vor_weihnachten.mp3

https://archive.org/details/die_nacht_vor_weihnachten_1971

#1971 #archiveOrg #Bayern2 #DieNachtVorWeihnachten #Literatur #NikolajGogol #Schriftsteller

Donald Trump’s Kennedy Center is showier, emptier and more political – The Washington Post

Donald Trump’s Kennedy Center is showier, emptier and more political

In 10 months, the president has transformed Washington’s cultural hub. Now comes his biggest night yet: the Kennedy Center Honors.

Updated today at 12:48 p.m. EST, 16 min
By Travis M. Andrews and Janay Kingsberry

On the day in February that President Donald Trump took over the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, his new board ousted Deborah Rutter, the longtime president of the institution. She gathered her staff to offer a hopeful farewell. That evening, she welcomed other leaders to her home to mourn.

“As with any wake, you drink a little too much, and you tell stories, and you laugh, and you cry,” Rutter told The Washington Post in a conversation in the spring.

Rutter had planned to step down at the end of 2025 after leading the Kennedy Center through a decade in which it had diversified its offerings, endured the 2020 lockdown and emerged to boast robust ticket sales and, according to publicly available tax filings, steadily grown revenue.

She still had four major items on her to-do list: growing the center’s endowment; furthering its work as an arts educator around the country; strengthening the financials of the National Symphony Orchestra; and renewing the contract with CBS or finding a new broadcast partner to air the Kennedy Center Honors.

Those plans died. But the Kennedy Center did not.

The center is now guided by a board of Trump loyalists and a new staff including the center’s president, Richard Grenell, a pugnacious veteran of the first Trump administration. They have terminated much of the former staff, lambasted the former leadership and made changes including the addition of high-wattage events like the World Cup draw. They have embarked on a $257 million renovation, in line with Trump’s broader effort to leave his mark on Washington’s cityscape. They’ve boasted about hefty fundraising.

Now, nearly 10 months in, a picture of a transformed institution has come into view. Standbys of the Kennedy Center’s stages like the National Symphony Orchestra have been strained by plummeting ticket sales and organizational uncertainty. Traveling productions and acts have pulled out. And a new kind of right-leaning programming has begun to take root.

So what is the Kennedy Center now?

For one thing, it’s getting a Trumpian revamp. He ordered new marble and the repainting of the exterior columns in austere white. Portraits of the first and second couples now hang in the center’s Hall of Nations, and the building exterior is occasionally lit up in red, white and blue (a move that, many staffers joke, makes the building look like the flag of France, not America).

“It was in rough shape,” Trump said at an event Saturday ahead of the Kennedy Center Honors. “But we’ve fixed the White House, and we’ve fixed the Kennedy Center.”

Even the medallions for the Honors, created by Ivan Chermayeff and made for nearly 50 years by a D.C.-area family, have been redesigned by Tiffany & Company.

And — wittingly or not — the new leadership has made the center a political football for the first time since its opening in 1971. House Republicans have suggested renaming it for Trump (the whole building) and the first lady (just the Opera House). Conservative groups have flocked there to host conferences and meetings. Senate Democrats are investigating the Kennedy Center, accusing Grenell of “self-dealing, favoritism, and waste,” which he has denied.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Donald Trump’s Kennedy Center is showier, emptier and more political – The Washington Post

The Beach Boys – Surf’s Up [1971], una breve recensione

Sono in viaggio nel 1971, e dunque era d’obbligo fare tappa qui. L’ho ascoltato e riascoltato, ho letto e (a volte) cantato i testi, poi ne ho letto e riletto, perché non conosco così bene i Beach Boys e mi è parso, già dopo averlo ascoltato la prima volta, che dovessi conoscere la storia del disco per tentare di capirlo.

Una storia di come è uscito fuori quest’album, universalmente riconosciuto come l’ultimo buono dei Boys, è raccontata qui.

Alla fine del viaggetto mi siedo di fronte allə alt rock chick e faccio sì con la testa la maggior parte del tempo. E dunque: i capolavori del disco sono Long Promised Road e Surf’s Up. Ci arriva vicino Disney Girls (1957) ma, e qui dissento in parte da quello che scrive lə suddettə, il testo della canzone è un po’ un neo brutto sul volto di una canzone musicalmente splendida. Un tentativo venuto male di scrivere una Village Green, potrei avventurarmi a dire: qui manca l’intelligenza, l’ironia e la sensibilità dei Davies, qui la nostalgia sembra solo un sogno bigotto e conservatore. Mi associo invece all’autrice nell’elevare Lookin’ At Tomorrow (A Welfare Song) e nel dare qualche calcio ben assestato a A Day in the Life of a Tree, a cui ne aggiungerei un altro, cioè la cosa del titolo stupido che fa il verso alla più bella canzone dei Beatles. Student Demonstration Time, invece, è ovviamente indegna e da cestinare.

Per il resto, alti e bassi: alti gli arrangiamenti, ma soprattutto le melodie e le armonie vocali (sono pur sempre i Beach Boys, non è che certe cose a un certo punto le disimpari), bassi i testi. La copertina è bellissima; è un dipinto basato sulla scultura End of the Trail di James Earle Fraser, di autore anonimo (o comunque a me sconosciuto), e credo rappresenti bene Surf’s Up, il quale è anche, tra le altre cose, l’ennesima opera d’arte della musica popolare che attesta la morte degli anni Sessanta (non ne avevamo bisogno, ma quello è un altro discorso).

Questa breve recensione è stata pensata per e pubblicata su Rate Your Music, dove a volte mi diverto a dare voti alle canzoni (che è anche un modo per vedere se a distanza di tempo sono ancora d’accordo con me stesso), e dunque vi beccate anche i voti traccia per traccia:

A1 Don’t Go Near the Water: 7/10
A2 Long Promised Road: 9/10
A3 Take a Load Off Your Feet: 7/10
A4 Disney Girls (1957): 8/10
A5 Student Demonstration Time: 5/10
B1 Feel Flows: 8/10
B2 Lookin’ at Tomorrow (A Welfare Song): 8/10
B3 A Day in the Life of a Tree: 7/10
B4 ‘Till I Die: 8/10
B5 Surf’s Up: 9/10

#1971 #SurfSUp #TheBeachBoys