Do they return to idols? Do they recover, taking up the spaces left free by the Church of Christ, characteristic aspects of the pagan world? A few days after the Amazon Synod, the Pachamama Synod — from the fetish depicting “Mother Earth,” which between 6 and 27 October was the center of ceremonies not far…
“In this month, which the Holy Church consecrates to the dead, we urge you to gather in the Christian suffrage, so that those who, having obtained forgiveness from their sins, had not yet deserved the remission of their punishment, may soon rise from Purgatory to Paradise, welcomed by the Angels, by the Saints, by the…
The news that in these days comes to us around the statuettes of the Pachamama, the mother goddess worshiped in the Inca religion, thrown into the Tiber from Ponte Sant’Angelo, at the foot of the castle dominated by St. Michael, makes us think of the fourth act of Nabucco, the opera by Giuseppe Verdi who…
One hundred seventy years ago, on October 17, 1849, the Polish French composer and pianist who renewed the sound of the Romantic piano died: Frederic Chopin (1810–1849). His superhuman, sad, and passionate art is well summarized in the following words, beautiful and moving, which the Venerable Pope Pius XII addressed to a large group of…
The news of the supreme glorification, on October 13, of Saint John Henry Newman (1801–1890) reawakens interest in this British cardinal, theologian and apologist. Beatified by Benedict XVI on September 19, 2010 in Great Britain, he was born in London to an Anglican family. For 20 years, he was minister of the Anglican Communion at…
“Vivaldi’s violins” — 12 of them, together with one viola, two cellos, and two double basses — left Venice for Cremona, to be studied, preserved, restored, and enhanced. The rare and precious collection is located in Venice’s ancient Ospedale della Pietà (today the Children’s Provincial Institute “Santa Maria della Pietà”), which has been the fulcrum…
On October 4, 350 years will have passed since the death of the Dutch Baroque painter and printmaker who loved light, darkness, and mystery: Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669). The musical side of Rembrandt — his baptismal name and his signature — can be glamorous. In some of his paintings, he portrays himself as a singer,…
A century ago, on August 9 in Montecatini Terme, just southwest of Pistoia in north central Italy, Ruggero Leoncavallo, Neapolitan opera composer, died. His fame is linked to Pagliacci (“Clowns”), a two-act opera of 1892, which, together with Cavalleria rusticana (“Rustic Chivalry,” 1890) by Pietro Mascagni, is the most explosive reaction against Richard Wagner and…
Identified in a private American collection, the harpsichord on which Gioachino Rossini learned to play came to light “That barbaric instrument” on which the composer in his adolescence was practicing “every day,” as we read in a letter of 18 October 1868, belonged to his teacher, Canon Giuseppe Malerbi. “The Swan of Pesaro” moved in…
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