Sylvia Lindenstrand

The young wine god Dionysus returns to his native town of Thebes after having established his cult in the east. In his entourage, he has a run of Bacchantes. Semele, his mother, was distrusted by her family when she claimed that Zeus was the father of her child. Dionysus has come to restore her, revealing his divinity, and require proper worship of the Theban legion.

Le Nozze di Figaro at Drottningholm Court Theater

This performance, and the film that documents it, is superb! From its comically vulgar opening in the Garter Inn, where we are introduced to a rotund (and slightly pathetic) Falstaff - in a richly nuanced performance by baritone Gabriel Bacquier cocooned in prosthetic girth (his face is too thin for the enormity to be real) - to the supremely beautiful nocturnal magic of the Finale in Windsor Park, Solti is lovingly accompanied by the sublime Vienna Philharmonic. They play with such delicacy and elan what is an undeniably delicate score, that I lost myself in the instrumentation, forgot it was Verdi, thought it was Mozart, and couldn't remember which Mozartean Opera this was. The woodwinds and strings are singled out for special praise: perfect intonation and phrasing doesn't begin to do them justice. They breathe life into this score, propel it forward, act as a Chorus commenting on the action.

David, a middle-aged researcher, lives happily with his wife Ingrid and their kids. By a coincident he meets and falls in love with a young woman named Eva. Their relationship will only last a few months.

There is a war in the world between the men and the women. A young girl tries to escape this reality and comes to a hidden place where a strange unicorn lives with a family: sister, brother, many children and an old woman that never leaves her bed but stays in contact with the world through her radio.