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Tosca - Glyndebourne Festival 2026

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  (EN CASTELLANO DEBAJO)  This summer we saw a controversial "Tosca" at the Glyndebourne Opera Festival of 2026. As usual, the singers were great. Caitlin Gotimer as Tosca sang very convincingly and gave a moving performance. Matteo Lippi was a fine Cavaradossi, the painter in love with Tosca, a famous and beautiful singer (in case any of you didn't already know...). Lastly, Vladislav Sulimsky as Baron Scarpia was also great. His role is a thankless one because Scarpia, to be convincing, has to be a guile character and unpleasant to women.  Here our Scarpia excelled at that.  The orchestra was directed by my favourite conductor, Mr. Robin Ticciati and, as usual, it was flawless.    What, in my opinion, was completely wrong was the story displayed on stage. It could be a thriller or a political drama but not our "Tosca". To begin with, the first Act is supposed to end with a "Te Deum", sung by the parishioners of Sant' Andrea della Valle, a church i...
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LA GRAZIA (2025)

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  (IN ENGLISH BELOW) Uno no sabe si estamos ante la mejor película de Sorrentino, por lo menos, hasta la fecha. En mi caso, mis favoritas de este director son "La grande bellezza" (“La gran belleza", 2013), "Youth" ("La Juventud", 2015) y esta última "La Grazia" (2025). Ha habido una huella felliniana en varias de sus películas. Así, uno cree que "La grande bellezza" puede considerarse un "aggiornamento" de "La dolce vita" (1960) y el personaje protagonista de Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo) como un trasunto de Marcello Rubini ( Marcello Mastroianni) en "La dolce vita". Por lo que respecta a "Youth" ( 2015), cuya acción transcurre en un balneario, uno cree que está influenciada por "Otto e mezzo" ("Fellini ocho y medio", 1963). De igual modo, su película "È stata la mano di Dio" ("Fue la mano de Dios", 2021), donde Sorrentino recrea su juventud en Nápol...
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ADIOS, AMIGO // FAREWELL MY FRIEND

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  ADIOS, AMIGO // FAREWELL MY FRIEND (In English below)  Decía Josep Pla, un escritor en lengua catalana de origen Ampurdanés (esto es, de la Costa Brava), nacido a finales del S. XIX y que desarrolló toda su actividad literaria en el S. XX que, a partir de los 40 años ya no se hacen "amigos", sino únicamente "conocidos" y "saludados" ("amics, coneguts i saludats", en su idioma original). Uno aquí, que ya ha pasado los sesenta, no puede dejar de dar la razón al escritor ampurdanés.  En efecto, uno cree que el "concepto de amistad" -vamos, el hacer amigos lisa y llanamente- es algo que se remonta a tu época de la infancia, en el colegio (el "cole"), en la universidad (la "uni") e, incluso, en tus primeros trabajos profesionales, donde buscas amigos con los que identificarte y poder confiar en ellos. Pero, una vez has pasado los 40 y sigues "subiendo" años en el calendario, el hacer "amigos" supone ...
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GRAND PRIX - 1966

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   Prior to seeing "F1", the upcoming sensation of this season, starring Brad Pitt, let me advise you to revisit (in case you've already seen it) or discover (if you still haven't seen it) "Grand Prix" (1966), directed by John Frankenheimer.   It's a movie about F-1 racing, that includes in cameo roles real pilots of that time like Jim Clark, Graham Hill and Jochen Rindt. It's not an old movie, or rather, it has aged well because F-1 races nowadays are very much like the ones seen in that movie, even though car engines and designs have improuved dramatically since then.  In this movie we follow the story of four racers who are competing for the Formula One Championship, even though the movie focuses more on the story of three of them.  There's Yves Montand, a French actor who was also a heart-throb of the time, as French pilot Jean-Pierre Sarti, a veteran who can´t stop racing, running for Ferrari; Brian Bedford, a Shakespearean theater actor who...
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