Vivaldi for a deserted city

Vivaldi for a deserted city

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norman lebrecht

November 28, 2020

Watch video here.

 

Comments

  • NYMike says:

    Lovely!

  • John Borstlap says:

    Beautiful….. and very sad.

    Florence! In the context of today the place has a symbolic meaning. In the early 14th century, the city suffered a number of devastating disasters, topped in 1348 by the plague which killed almost half of the population. It is not difficult to imagine the anxiety, the nihilism and pessimism that reigned at the time. But after this dark period, the longing of the surviving population for a more positive way of looking at the world created a need for a rebirth of the things that make life worth living again: civilised values, education, science, beauty, the arts – something which would stimulate the faculties which had been numbed for so long. And exactly in the city which suffered so much, the spirit of a rebirth was born and was to become the inspiration of the whole continent: the Renaissance.

    • Nicholas says:

      I’m afraid Harry Lime’s more cynical view of the Renaissance, written and spoken by Orson welles in the movie The Third Man, is closer to the truth as much as I would like to embrace wholeheartedly Mr. Borstlap’s more admirably optimistic vision of humanism.

      • John Borstlap says:

        In the last century, nihilism and cynicism were very popular, as a result of overwhelming disasters. Historic evidence however, is equally overwhelming: the birth of a new world, and a flowering of culture filling all the great museums to the brim. It’s not optimism, it’s reality, in spite of all the ciriticism we can have of the Renaissance.

        Cynics and nihilists never create something, never invent something, never improve on something.

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