John Retallack

A forbidden-to-take-during-the-performance photo of Carla Chambel,

the actress playing Juliet in Valérie Braddell-midwived "Romeu e Julieta" ,

at the Teatro São Luís, Lisbon.

A superb mise-en-scène by UK director John Retallak.

Jean Seberg

after-supper last drink at the Urban

António Lobo Antunes

"Escrevo sempre a morte de Mandrake"...

Comics High Literature


Last night António Lobo Antunes was in town. Carrying effortlessly his ironical and slightly presumptuous persona. I can't go into it now.( Besides the evening was just beginning. After the literary apéritif, the main course was "Hoy: El Diario de Adan Y Eva" at the the Teatro Maria Victoria and the postres (bar-hopping) were good too. )

Uncle António said that too many writers describe very serious literary influences - and in doing so plainly lying - when the main impact in fact in their creative lives might have been the adventurous comics, the glorious trash (my word not his) of youthful readership. Like Flash Gordon or Mandrake, Master Lobo-Antunes pointed it out.

Another recurrent theme of his free-association conscience-stream lecture yesterday at the Biblioteca Nacional was (of course) Death. (From the one you witness in the African last colonial spasms of a declining Empire to the un-Godly death of a child with terminal leukemia).

Pressed upon what were his books about he said in that inimitable disdainful but simultaneously childish tone: "I keep writing the death of Mandrake".

Marcello Mastroianni

the floor of the Oyster Bar at the Hotel Urban, Madrid

Peter Gabriel

goldfrapp in concert

Allison Goldfrapp

Tell me what live performances you attend and I'll tell who you are...



Ms. Goldfrapp, live at the Divino last Friday


What was a Porsche-driven and Loewe and Etro-dressed blogger of yours doing in an almost suburban Rock venue off Ermida del Campo, the honourable Reader might ask himself in disbelief?

Allison Goldfrapp is the simple answer. Yes, I had to struggle with roadworks that turn on-bord computer GPS instructions worthless.. yes, I had to endure sub-standard solomillo in a inner-city mall .. yes, I had to queue for almost one hour to get to the ticket booth.. But some democratic inconveniences have sometimes to be experienced if one wants to keep surfing...

The concert opened with "Utopia" from her inaugural CD "Felt Mountain" (2000) and it was pure bliss. Super-brain indeed..

Utopia

It's a strange day

No colours or shapes

No sound in my head

I forget who I am

When I'm with you

There's no reason

There's no sense

I'm not supposed

To feel

I forget who I am

I forget

Fascist baby

Utopia, utopia

My dog needs new ears

Make his eyes

See forever

Make him live

Like me

Again and again

Fascist baby

Utopia, utopia

I'm wired to the world

That's how I know everything

I'm superbrain

That's how they made me

Fascist baby

Utopia, utopia

An unexpected beneficial side-effect of the rock concert was the considerable lowering of late- morning-sickness of a pregnant concert-goer who was standing near our group. As a matter of fact the passive smoking of 2-delta-tetra-hydro-cannabinol near the stage was staggering. The anti-nausea effects of the chemical molecule of grass are well reported in clinical medicine, and I dare say that a "porro" in the vicinity can help in unsuspected ways..

Yasunari Kawabata

Cloister of Toledo's Cathedral (5.11.2005)

cybershot

Cloister of Toledo's Cathedral ( 5.11.2005)

Charles Moore

Right on target..


With due apologies for copyright infringement...

As the Honourable Reader is well aware of one of the weekly pleasures of this blogger of yours is the enjoyment of the latest copy of "The Spectator". The best magazine around, famous for its healthy elitist attitude and unapologetically conservative line but with a slightly anarco-liberal philosophy like open-source software. Apart from the exceedingly high quality of the writing and some delicious columns (both great fun and not dumbed down like most of journalism nowadays) the "Spec" is famous for its illustrations and cartoons.

The cartoon depicted above made many of my close friends laugh. From the great expectations of a writer-in-progress to the more mundane and frivolous activities as a blogger: a picture is worth a thousand paragraphs...

Leporello

" la giovin principiante " ..

prime-time girl

The Honourable Reader, undoubtedly a Opera-lover in his spare time, might remember the famous "1003 in Spain" scene from Don Giovanni, when Leporello was spilling the beans to Elvira:

(..)

ogni villa, ogni borgo, ogni paese

è testimon di sue donnesche imprese.

Madamina, il catalogo è questo

Delle belle che amò il padron mio;

un catalogo egli è che ho fatt'io;

Osservate, leggete con me.

In Italia seicento e quaranta;

In Almagna duecento e trentuna;

Cento in Francia, in Turchia novantuna;

Ma in Ispagna son già mille e tre.

V'han fra queste contadine,

Cameriere, cittadine,

V'han contesse, baronesse,

Marchesine, principesse.

E v'han donne d'ogni grado,

D'ogni forma, d'ogni età .

Nella bionda egli ha l'usanza

Di lodar la gentilezza,

Nella bruna la costanza,

Nella bianca la dolcezza.

Vuol d'inverno la grassotta,

Vuol d'estate la magrotta;

È la grande maestosa,

La piccina e ognor vezzosa.

Delle vecchie fa conquista

Pel piacer di porle in lista;

Sua passion predominante

È la giovin principiante.

Non si picca - se sia ricca,

Se sia brutta, se sia bella;

Purché porti la gonnella,

Voi sapete quel che fa.

The Halloween week-end at The Count's country-house offered us various plots and sub-plots going on simultaneously. This blogger of yours would be extremely happy to recall it and to turn into a chronicle at least the highlights of the most recent gathering of the Praia Tribe. Hélas! the combined devastating effects of incipient "Alzheymer" and post-hangover syndrome are to be reckoned with. One of the undercurrent narratives, though, I do remember alright.. it was like a remake of Bertolluci's "Stealing Beauty", that amazingly poetical elegy of the Young Woman (played by Liv Tiller) at the once-in-a-life-time supreme point of her physicality.. Lonesome wolves us, with Giovanni-like honourable careers, could only witness in awe the freshness of skin, body and mind and mumble about how Time had past. Tabu involved apart ("Thou shell not look with lubricious eyes the dauhgter of a Friend!"), there was a pungent nostalgic tone colouring the rooms, a bit like "The Secret Garden" for adults with no illusions left. The tender flesh of prime-time girls were no longer for their yellowish wobbling teeth.. but the celebration of Youth was sincere and good-humoured.

Dorothea von Lieven

Desperate Diplomatic Housewives...


Dorothea von Lieven, née Beckendorff


If the Honourable Reader is not a misogynist and believes in the power accumulated by emancipated women, John Charmley's "The Princess and the Politicians" is a small gem. The main thesis of this historian-biographer of Princess Dorothea is a serious one. Grand Ladies in their early XIX century Salons who happened to be insiders of the Society circles where political leaders had their informal get-togethers were themselves political actors. Dorothea was the wife of the Russian Ambassador to Britain, Prince von Lieven. They managed to stay in London for twenty years plus, during which many crucial events for the understanding of European Nation-States relationships took place. She begun as a classical Ambassadress, that is as an hostess and a charmer, but she quickly graduated to a husband and wife act of co-analysts of European diplomatic moves, as seen from the eyes of Castlereaghs, Cannings, Greys and Palmerstons. Apparently she went to bed with most of them, and with Prince Metternich too. She ended up being a formidable political operator, mingling without shame or reserve with British internal politics, almost, at some point, a Minister-maker. The slight chance for intelligent women to exercise influence - in those times when they had no political rights, such as to vote and to be elected to Parliament - was is to play with their charm and the trump card of their sexual availability? Let's not be petty bourgeois here and read flirtations, affaires du coeur and the occasional night out of the marital bed with our puritanical tabloid-selling glasses. These are distorting lenses indeed. But what about today? Did "sex, intrigue and diplomacy" went on until modern times? Or since women can now exert raw power without intermediaries that dimension is irrelevant? What about names that spring to mind on both sides of the debate?Eleanore Roosevelt? Golda? Margarets (Trudeau andThatcher)? The Italian Mrs. Gandhi? Angie Merkel?

For students of Imperiology Charmley's book is good reading too. Fascinating to witness those last times (from the defeat of Napoleon to the crude expansionist drive of the Tsarist armies to the East and South) when British and Russian Empires were on the same side of the geopolitical fence. But if you are serious about understanding Empires you have to read different stuff.

Not really a coincidence that a descendant of Russian and British Imperialists, and a Lieven himself, has written a really incisive book on what makes Empires these enormously fascinating political animals. I can recommend Prof. Dominic Lieven's "Empire" as a kind of serious full-bodied red wine one likes to drink after the "Princess" more frivolous black-pinot bubbly stuff has put you in the right mood.

Luis Silva Dias

LSD, aka " The Parakeet "



Bird Flu Blues

I warned Him. The portrait was too good not be on the net in less than 48 hours. After some digital manipulation, His photo, taken during a separate Halloween private party that took place during this last LongWeekend-long party at the Count's, is about to enrich the photo-gallery of this blog. I'm moving the mouse-guided arrow to the "Publish Post" orange interactive square. One-click and the kite will fly.. That's it..

Luis da Nortada

not very pleasant-looking but exquisitely tasted fish