Spices

Tags

Austria, Fortunoff, Germany, Holiday, Juniper, NYC, PEI, Salzburg, spices, Sterling silver

In our Household I do all the shopping, Mr Will does most of the cooking and baking. He gives me the lists of ingredients, some rare and obscure even Gourmet magazine has not thought of it.

This means that on our small island sometimes shopping for ingredients can be difficult and challenging. Since 2010 things have improved a lot and though the native diet is not sophisticated it is improving with the constant flow of Canadians arriving here to settle and introducing a more cosmopolitan gourmet cuisine.

This month I was able to persuade the manager of our grocery store (it’s a national chain) that he should import veal since I knew that out of province stores had it. Next comes spices. Today Chef Will suddenly announced that in a burst of inspiration he was thinking of a new recipe and he needed Star anise and Cardamon seeds. These are two spices common everywhere in Canada except here in PEI land of potatoes.

Cardamon is a wonderful and versatile spice, I remember in the Middle East how it finds its way into coffee making and gives the most wonderful flavour. I finally found both spices at the Bulk Barn, though when I asked the clerk about it, he had no idea what I was talking about. This happens a lot here, radicchio is confused with red cabbage, NOT the same thing, but hey I am not complaining at the check out I pay for cabbage instead of radicchio a difference of $3.00 in price.

Last week I was looking for Juniper Berries, commonly used to make gin. Given that PEI has a big gin industry and produces its own 50 Proof Island Gin you would think that Juniper berries is a common staple, NOT so, it is not.  Luckily for us a friend had some on hand but she had bought them off Island. Chef Will needed them to make Potted Pork with Juniper berries. I helpfully suggested that we use Holly berries nice bright and red instead, festive looking. I was told they are poisonous and would kill off our guests, that would be most inconvenient  I presume.

Everything is closed solid as of 24, 25 and 26 December and same for 31 Dec and 1 Jan. it will be very quiet and am happy for it.

Here are some photos of heirlooms.

From Fortunoff on 5th Ave. NYC, a gift from my little sister in 1983 when I joined the Foreign Service. It has travelled with me all around the world.

Press glass punch bowl c. 1926, a wedding gift of Will’s parents. It is heavy and festive looking. Will be used for a red wine punch tomorrow for our Christmas Eve party.

Wood Nutcracker, hand painted made in the GDR (East Germany) 1982. I got him in Ottawa at a wonderful German Deli, now closed, back in those days the shop owners would import the most beautiful traditional German Christmas ornaments and he was in the window.
He travelled quite a bit with us all around the world and always appear at Christmas time. It is difficult today to find such nice wood sculpted Nutcrackers.

Austrian Tin hand painted Christmas tree and old St-Nick on his horse. We found this in Salzburg while attending the Music Festival in May each year. We use to take the train in Rome and travel up to Austria via the Brenner pass to Innsbruck and then Salzburg. There is a shop in a covered alley with all manner of traditional Tin figurines, it is really an art form made by the Wilhelm Schweizer co. in Diessen, Germany.

Our home terrace in Rome on Via dei Villini at Christmas time in 2009. We had lots of plants and this area was in a big park with lots of Maritime pines all around.

Christmas 2008 Rome, at home on Via dei Villini. Our tree then was 8 feet tall since the ceilings were taller.

Salzburg in Winter during the Mozart week with the river Salzach and the Archbishop’s castle on the hill, in 2010. It is a very small town and an easy walk.

 

Official Portrait

Tags

Anniversary, Austria, Canada., Family, Laurent, life, Salzburg, tradition, Trudeau, vacation, Will

Many years ago my parents were friends with Armenian born Yousuf Karsh, the World famous Canadian photographer who lived for many years in a suite at the Chateau Laurier Hotel in Ottawa, he offered to my parents on their Wedding Anniversary to do a series of portraits of them. We kept those wonderful portraits and I use to kid my Mother that she had now something in common with Josef Stalin and Winston Churchill, that of having her portrait taken by Karsh. Those portraits are family heirlooms now.

Ottawa being the Capital many Politicians have their picture taken by photographers but some shine above the rest and one is Jean-Marc Carisse who came to prominence in the late 1960’s with his portraits and action shots of our then Prime Minister Pierre E. Trudeau, the father of Justin. Carisse then took pictures of all manner of famous people and his work was in great demand. He became identified with the Liberal Party of Canada, the natural governing party of Canada. His skill was to take perfectly natural photos of his subjects and their humanity just shine through. Jean-Marc Carisse is an award winning Canadian photojournalist. He has photographed the political, cultural and social scenes in Ottawa and around the world for over 40 years, including stints as official photographer serving the Prime Minister’s Office (Pierre E. Trudeau, John Turner and Jean Chrétien) and as a freelancer. His photographs have appeared on many covers of magazines including Time, Paris Match and Maclean’s.

One of the more famous portrait of Prime Minister Pierre E. Trudeau with a dedication by Trudeau to Carisse. A Prime Minister in 1969 as a young Caesar. One of our truly great Prime Minister’s

I always wanted to have a picture of us taken by him and we went to see him at Studio Café Carisse on Elgin Street in Ottawa just a few steps away from our house. At Christmas time our puppies Nicky and Nora arranged a gift certificate, they are such clever Dachshunds.

Here is the result of Carisse’s work. This portrait is to mark my 60th and Will’s 70th Birthday.

Wearing our Traditional Austrian Trachten jackets a souvenir of the many vacations spent in Innsbruck, Salzburg and Vienna and of many happy memories of our long life together. This year, 2016 is an anniversary year for us and the beginning of a new adventure.

 

 

 

More reading

Tags

Austria, Empire, Europe, Guapa, Middle East, Saleem Haddad, Stefan Zweig, Vienna

I have this old habit, in the evening before going to sleep I like to read a little. Most of my reading is done in bed at night, I find this soothing and it helps me to fall asleep. In the last few weeks I have read two books by Stefan Zweig, (1881-1942), born in Vienna in a wealthy privilege family and died in Petropolis, Brazil in a suicide pact with his second wife Lotte Altmann. He was a famous writer, journalist, biographer of the first part of the 20th century and his books remain to this day great to read and give the reader wonderful insight. He also knew and was friends with all the great intellectuals of that time and do not be surprise to see him associated with so many famous people it is head spinning, Sigmund Freud, Romain Rolland, Richard Strauss, Rainer Maria Rilke and many others.

The first book was the celebrated biography of Marie-Antoinette the ill-fated Queen of France. I have already written on it in a previous post and I recommend it if you want to go beyond the fiction and the Hollywood version of her life.

The other book is the last one ever written by Zweig, The World of Yesterday. He mailed the manuscript to his editor the day he and his second wife committed suicide in Brazil.

Zweig describes himself as a European in the old world sense and at the same time a European of what we know today as the European Union. He is also an enigma for us who live at the end of the 20th and now in the 21 century. He was married for many years to Frederike Maria Von Winternitz but never mentions her in this book which covers the period from his birth in 1881 to 1925. The reader could be excused for thinking that Zweig was single, he divorced her in 1938 and she lived on until 1971.  Was he a very private man? I do not know, in The World of Yesterday he certainly speaks volume about himself and his famous friends, his work, the people he knew and frequented, his travels, about being an assimilated and integrated Jew in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and he describes and analyses in minute detail the society of the time, a society which has totally disappeared now and lives on in print. You have to imagine a world, Europe, the old Empires ruled for hundreds of years by Princes and Sovereigns and then the total collapse in 1919, everything changing forever in a radical  manner with the rise in Europe of Fascism and Bolchevism in Russia.

Zweig misses the old world, what he calls the Age of Golden Security assured by an aged Emperor (Franz-Joseph) over a vast Empire comprising dozen nationalities, languages and various religions. He explains the commercial reasons for the First World War, a war promoted by French and German Armament dealers and British and German competing merchant marine. Decades of Peace in Europe, the last war was in 1870 and lasted just over 3 weeks had lulled people into believing that not much would happen in 1914. No one could imagine that by November 1918 their world would no longer exist.

Zweig did spend part of the war in Zurich in neutral Switzerland, a land of plenty in a sea of wont. He describes a scene at the end of the war in 1918, the Kaiser in Germany has already gone into exile in Holland. Zweig stands on the platform of the Train Station at the Border with Switzerland on the Austrian side, everything around him is tattered and the people look tired and sad, the defeat and fall of the Austrian Empire is dawning on them. Zweig notices how the Station is becoming crowded with people, officials and Austrian soldiers though no trains is expected, he notices a beautiful black train of highly polished cars pulling slowly into the station, it’s the Imperial train, at the window stands Emperor Karl and his wife Empress Zita who are leaving Austria and going into exile, He refused to abdicate and simply left quietly, ending the 900 year rule of the Hapsburg dynasty, Zweig notices how everyone is silent and looks embarrassed, Zweig felt at that moment that this was truly the end. The end of it for him, for the world he had known, yes and how he then maybe went into a state of deep melancholy. The years that followed will see the rise of economic difficulties, Fascism in many European countries, the great depression, anti-semitism, nazism, the rise of Communism and then the Second World War. Of course for Zweig life goes on but on a different track, having the financial means he then travels abroad fleeing the chaos of the new and territorially small Republic of Austria, he will go to England as Freud did, to North America and finally to Brazil. Despite having a new young wife Lotte Altmann, he feels he cannot re-invent himself and fears aging, the past of Old Europe haunt him.

Zweig’s Villa in Salzburg on Kapuzinerberg 5, it is a private house today.

I find Zweig to be a complex person, a highly educated, refined person, he seems to be several people at once, the great writer, the friend of the cognoscenti, living in a world at the top of the social pyramid but then the other person appears emotional, overly sentimental, detached, revealing little of his personal life, this may be simply his 19th century sensibilities, gentile upbringing of not burdening people with personal details, something unknown to us in our world of the selfie.

The other book I read was just published by a first time author Saleem Haddad, a young thirty something man. Saleem Haddad is a writer and aid worker. He was born in Kuwait City to an Iraqi-German mother and a Palestinian-Lebanese father, and has lived in Jordan, Cyprus, Canada and the U.K. He has worked with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) and other international organizations in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, and Egypt. He and his partner have a greyhound, Jack and live in London.

His book published in March is entitled Guapa, the name of a Gay underground bar. I found this novel after a friend of mine who owns a bookstore café in Jordan recommended it to me. I liked the book instantly, the story is fast moving and happens in an unnamed Arab country, I was convinced it was Damascus the Capital of Syria but the author Haddad based the city where the protagonist lives on several cities, Amman, Beirut, Cairo. He does this on purpose and it works very well, though the President Dictator reminded me of Bashar Al-Assad and his wife Asma in their description in this book, this is why I thought it might be Syria.

Guapa gives a very accurate portrait of Arab life, family and society, I recognized it instantly, I came to care about Rasa and the people around him.  Haddad says; Not naming the country also allows the story to take on a metaphorical nature: I really didn’t want to write a book that would be sold as an anthropological or political ‘study’ of one country. Instead I wanted to draw on common themes young Arabs across the region could relate to, regardless of their background. The book also shows in the narrative of the story that Arabs are not a monolithic group and the region is populated by many other people who are not Arabs.

The story of the book is about Rasa, a twenty-something-year-old gay man living in an unnamed Arab country, as he negotiates family, societal expectations, queerness, love, police brutality, authoritarianism, decorum, revolution, imperialist narratives, and Islamist extremism—all in the space of twenty-four hours. Throughout Rasa’s journey, the reader is thrown back into the losses, definitions, redefinitions, and rebellions that orbit his life. I would recommend reading this book for anyone who wishes to understand this part of the World and the people living in it. As they say, We are not in Kansas anymore.

 

 

 

New Year’s Eve and Day

Tags

2016, Austria, Concert, Musikverein, New Year, Vienna

So as tradition says it is time to start planning New Year’s Eve and New Year’s day.

Now on the Eve or St-Sylvester we will be at home a quiet dinner, we have not been anywhere in decades on New Year’s Eve, cannot be bothered with going out, champagne can be enjoyed in the comfort of your own living room.

On New Year’s Day one event we always look forward to is the beautiful concert from the Golden Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna.  http://www.wienerphilharmoniker.at/new-years-concert/the-new-years-concert

There are in fact 3 concerts at the Musikverein in Vienna for the New Year. If you wish to go and attend in person, you have to register online to buy tickets one year in advance between 2 Jan and 19 Feb. 2016 for the 2017 concert and then there is a draw and if your name is selected you are invited to purchase tickets for one of the 3 concerts. The worldwide demand for tickets is tremendous. The preview performance on the 30th Dec, the New Year’s Eve Concert and the big one the New Year’s Day concert broadcasted live. The price of the tickets is, well let’s just say it is not for all pocket books. Dress code is formal for this prestigious event. In Vienna the concert is at 11:00am so you can then proceed to your New Year’s Day luncheon afterwards.

This year the Conductor is Mariss Jansons with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. The program includes music by the following composers, Robert Stolz, Johann Strauss, Jr., Carl Michael Ziehrer, Eduard Strauss, Josef Strauss, Èmile Waldteufel, Josef Hellmesberger sen., Johann Strauss, sen.

It is broadcasted around the world through the magic of the internet. Please look at the site for the time of broadcast, it is re-broadcasted on Public Radio in the USA and in Canada. You can watch and listen as it is re-broadcasted around 02:30pm and 07:30pm.

 

I will be shopping tomorrow for croissants and something nice to eat on January 1, what else is there to do on that day. For breakfast Shirred Eggs, bacon, some nice cheese, croissants, something sweet and champagne.

For lunch a nice quiche and salad, for dinner got to think of something festive to remind us of all the goods things in life.

I just noticed that my miniature purple coloured Orchids have started to open just in time fo the New Year.

Whatever you do for the New Year, I hope you enjoy yourself.

Prosit Neu Jahr!

 

Kronos,(time) from a temple in the gardens of the Villa Torlonia, Via Nomentana, Rome

No Salzburg for us this year.

Tags

Austria, Festival, Festspiele, Mozart, Salzburg, Whitsun

At this time of the year we would head for Salzburg, Austria for the Music Festival at Pentecost weekend, the Whitsun Festival 22-25 May 2015. It is a Festival of music, concerts and opera first inaugurated in 1920 and held every year.

In 1917, Friedrich Gehmacher and Heinrich Damisch formed an organization known as the Salzburger Festspielhaus-Gemeinde to establish an annual festival of drama and music, emphasizing especially the works of Mozart. At the close of the war in 1918, the festival’s revival was championed by five men now regarded as the founders: the poet and dramatist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the composer Richard Strauss, the scenic designer Alfred Roller, the conductor Franz Schalk, and the director Max Reinhardt, then intendant of the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, who had produced the first performance of Hofmannsthal’s Jedermann at the Berlin Zirkus Schumann arena in 1911.

The Salzburg Festival was officially inaugurated on 22 August 1920 with Reinhardt’s performance of Hofmannsthal’s Jedermann on the steps of Salzburg Cathedral, starring Alexander Moissi. The practice has become a tradition, and the play is now always performed at Cathedral Square, from 1921 accompanied by several performances of chamber music and orchestra works. The first operatic production came in 1922, with Mozart’s Don Giovanni conducted by Richard Strauss. The singers were mainly drawn from the Wiener Staatsoper, including Richard Tauber as Don Ottavio.

The first festival hall was erected in 1925 at the former Prince Archbishops’ horse stables on the northern foot of the Mönchsberg mountain according to plans by Clemens Holzmeister and opened with Gozzi’s Turandot dramatized by Karl Vollmöller. At that time the festival had already developed a large-scale program including live broadcasts by the Austrian RAVAG radio network. The following year the adjacent former episcopal Felsenreitschule riding academy, carved into the Mönchsberg rock face, was converted into a theater, inaugurated with the performance of Servant of Two Masters by Carlo Goldoni. In the 21st century, the original festival hall, suitable only for concerts, was reconstructed as a third venue for fully staged opera and concert performances and reopened in 2006 as the Haus für Mozart.

The years from 1934 to 1937 were a golden period when famed conductors such as Arturo Toscanini and Bruno Walter conducted many performances. In 1936, the festival featured a performance by the Trapp Family Singers, whose story was later dramatized as the musical and film The Sound of Music (featuring a shot of the Trapps singing at the Felsenreitschule). In 1937, Boyd Neel and his orchestra premiered Benjamin Britten’s Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge at the Festival.

The Festival’s popularity suffered a major blow upon the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938. Toscanini resigned in protest, artists of Jewish descent like Reinhardt and Georg Solti had to emigrate, and the Jedermann, last performed by Attila Hörbiger, had to be dropped.

The post-war festival slowly regained its prominence as the premier summer opera festival, especially in works by Mozart, with conductor Herbert von Karajan becoming artistic director in 1956. In 1960 the Great Festival Hall (Großes Festspielhaus) opera house opened its doors. As this summer festival gained fame and stature as the premier venue for opera, drama, and classical concert presentation, its musical repertoire concentrated on Mozart and Strauss, but other works, such as Verdi’s Falstaff and Beethoven’s Fidelio, were also performed.

Upon Karajan’s death in 1989, the festival was drastically modernized and expanded by director Gerard Mortier, who was succeeded by Peter Ruzicka in 2001. In 2006, the festival was led by intendant Jürgen Flimm and concert director Markus Hinterhäuser. That year, Salzburg celebrated the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth by staging all 22 of his operatic works (including two unfinished operas), to great acclaim. All 22 were filmed and released on DVD in November 2006. The 2006 festival also saw the opening of the Haus für Mozart.

The festival’s current director is Sven-Eric Bechtolf who replaced Alexander Pereira who left in 2014 for LaScala Milan, he had succeeded Flimm who departed in 2011 to become director of the Berlin State Opera.

The Salzburg Whitsun Festival (Salzburger Pfingstfestspiele) is an extension of the traditional Salzburg Summer Festival established in 1973, initially performing operas along with works from the great Baroque orchestral repertoire at the Grosses Festspielhaus during Whitsun (or Pentecost) weekend. This is the Festival we have attended for the last 7 years.

For 2015 at Whitsun the 2 operas are from CHRISTOPH WILLIBALD GLUCK • IPHIGÉNIE EN TAURIDE and GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL • SEMELE which is sold out.

In the Concerts this year we have at the Stiftung Mozarteum a Matinee with CHRISTOPH and JULIAN PRÉGARDIEN, at the Haus Für Mozart ARIA CONCERT PHILIPPE JAROUSSKY which we always like, he has a wonderful voice and will do a Handel Concert. Also A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM • BALLET with John Neumeier, Jürgen Rose, Soloists and ensemble of HAMBURG BALLETT, Simon Hewett, Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg.

Then LA LIRA D’ORFEO with  Rolf Lislevand, Marco Ambrosini, Thor Harald Johnsen, David Mayoral, Ulrik Gaston Lersen, Dominique Girod
Works by Gaspar Sanz, Francesco Corbetta, Gian Paolo Foscarini, Alessandro Piccinini, Hieronymus Kapsberger, Trad, Girolamo Frescobaldi, Bernardo Gianoncelli, aus dem Lautenbuch der Margaret Board, Thomas Robinson, Antonio Carbonchi, Diego Ortiz, Santiago de Murcia

The Gala Evening and look at the names of the artists, worth the trip just by itself. At the Grosses Festspielhaus

Performers: Anna Netrebko, Cecilia Bartoli, Marianne Crebassa, Juan Diego Flórez, Christopher Maltman, Andreas Scholl, Salzburger Bachchor, Camerata Salzburg, Louis Langrée
Works by Henry Purcell, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Joseph Haydn, Jacques Offenbach
and other works.

Going to the Whitsun Festival means 2 to 3 concerts per day, leaving just enough time for clothes change, fresh shirt or change of suit. Reservations have to be made for dinner and lunch, it is a small town. The atmosphere is magical in Salzburg, you often get to meet the artists between concerts, there is a real intimate little town feeling. So very beautiful, maybe next year we will go to Salzburg.

banner photo

Tags

Austria, Salzburg

My new banner photo was taken last year in June 2014, a general view of the City of Salzburg, Austria seen from the Salzach River. Such a wonderful little town where you can walk everywhere.