The Audience Understood Before the Curtain Fell

The Audience Understood Before the Curtain Fell

Prague, October 29, 1787I have heard music that stopped me before. Bach in Leipzig. Certain late Monteverdi. But what happened in the Nostitz Theatre tonight is something I am still attempting to locate in my memory for comparison and finding nothing adequate.Don...
Alchemy: What Prague Taught Me

Alchemy: What Prague Taught Me

Prague, late 16th centuryRudolf II’s Prague was a city organized around the belief that the world’s hidden laws could be discovered through sustained, systematic investigation of matter. The alchemists were wrong about the chemistry: base metal cannot be...