The Old Opera House in Frankfurt is one of the landmark buildings. In 1987 the Opera caught fire and it took 3 years and 200 Million EUR to rebuild it from the ashes of what became the largest such disaster since World War II. The fire was set by a homeless who broke into the building through a side window. Frustrated that he did not find food, he gathered some newspapers and burned down the building. Now, what looks old from outside, is just the plain opposite when you enter. It's more modern than the New Opera of town, with excellent seating and acoustics.

Last Monday, I was in the 4.th Museum Concert directed by Tung-Chieh Chuang with the Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester (Frankfurt Opera and Museum Orchestra) and Kian Soltani cello. It was Georges Bizet Symphony in C Major, Camille Saint-Saëns Cello concerto Nr. 1 in a minor op. 33 and after the break Igor Strawinsky Petruschka (in the 1947 edition). It was nice and I really enjoyed the evening. Such concerts are more "meditative" than opera and a good start into the week.

Snapshot of the interior of the Old Opera House Frankfurt, taken during the break of the 4th Museum Concert.

The open air performance of La Traviata in Schloss Engers on July 31st was really at risk of rain. But we were very lucky, and there were only a few drops, minutes before the the opera started. The set up was in the court yard of the former hunting palace, which is located strait at the Rhine river. It was quite some fun, in the original sense of opera: entertainment, a very nice dinner in the palace, and an audience in a happy mood - nothing snobbish. Sometimes the local church bells rang, or the pilot of a sports plane decided to do an extra round to see what is happening down there. But this only caused amusement on all sides. We stayed in the palace guest house and drove back to Bonn on Monday morning.

The weather in Bonn then gave us a few days of more or less constant rain and I could have worked efficiently indoors, would I not have been plagued by severe vertigo. I still relate this to the rabies vaccination, of why I received the last shot of a 0, 3, 7 - scheme of Rabipur only 4 days ago. Still, I manage to do some work, plan the coming trip to Kenya, and prepare my lecture material for Strathmore University (Nairobi). It just goes slow, when everything spins around.