Happy Birthday, Puccini!

December 22 marks the birthday of the Italian opera composer Giacomo Puccini, born in Lucca in 1858. 

I love a bit of Puccini, despite the 'populist' criticisms. Tosca (1900) is, in fact, my favourite opera of all time. 

To celebrate, anyway, here's Luciano Pavarotti singing Recondita armonia, from the opening of Tosca.

The Boston Tea Party

16 December is the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party in 1773, so in celebration I'm drinking a cup of Assam. 

Of course, this is meant ironically. The incident was the culmination of British repression in the American colonies. Let's see if I've got this right. 

The British imported their tea from China, with the East India Company having the monopoly on this. When the Colonists developed a taste for tea, Parliament in London passed an act that ensured the Colonies could only import their tea from Britain. However, the Company was prohibited to export, instead selling by auction in Britain to merchants who then sold it on. All the added taxes in this process resulted in a fairly prohibitive price once it reached America.

But the Dutch didn't have half so complicated a process, leading to a huge upsurge in smuggled Dutch tea making it into the British Colonies. Parliament, in quite a convoluted move, considerably lowered the tax imposed on the Company, instead taxing tea directly in the Colonies. This proved contentious - indeed, it was called unlawful in the Colonies, as the British Constitution clearly states that Britons can only be taxed by their elected representatives, but the Colonies did not elect any members to Parliament. By the early 1770s things had quietened down, though it wasn't to last...

Parliament began taxing the Company again in 1772, whose attempts to offset the tax by price rises merely reduced sales. The following year, the Tea Act allowed the Company to sell directly to the Colonies, but this move effectively extended the Company's monopoly to encompass the Colonies as well as Britain. 

Whig Colonists began to chafe under the heavy-handed actions of the British Parliament, specifically over the representation issue, and the extension of the monopoly. The protest came to a head on the evening of 16 December 1773, when about a hundred men, some dressed in Mohawk costumes, boarded three newly-arrived vessels and dumped the entire contents of the tea chests into the harbour in Boston. 

The protest initially united both political parties in Britain against the Colonists, but conciliatory measures were soon offered, but the Boston Tea Party was one of the great milestones on the road to the Revolutionary War of 1775-83. 

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American Colonial history is something that really draws me in, I suppose largely because I know so little about it. Whenever we talk of the British Empire in history, it always seems to focus on India and the African colonies, while America is somewhat swept aside. Off-and-on (more off than on, admittedly), I've been meaning to remedy this, and I'm sure my academic adventures will be shared with you all here! 

The Parthenon sculptures

Evening everyone!
I've been studying the Parthenon sculptures this week, as part of the degree I'm doing with the Open University (I'm currently mid-A219, Exploring the Classical World), so thought I'd share some pictures I'd taken in previous trips to London's British Museum, of the so-called "Elgin Marbles". 

These sculptures were originally part of the frieze running around the circumference of the Parthenon in Athens, depicting the Panathenaic Festival (the annual festival for the birthday of Athene). They would have been much higher up than, well, eye level, which makes the level of detail you can see quite astounding, really. 

The above sequence shows a priest and a youth folding the peplos, the garment woven by young girls prior to the festival and dedicated to the goddess Athene during the festivities. 

The above three pictures are of the metopes, panels that lined the outside of the Parthenon in the entablature - the part of the building directly above the columns and beneath the cornice. These scenes generally show the triumph of (Athenian) civilisation over barbarism, depicted by men wrestling variously with centaurs and Amazons. As with the frieze, these panels would also have been high up - the columns themselves were 34ft high. 

Finally, the Pediment, the gable that was situated above the entablature. The Parthenon pediments depicted the birth of Athene (on the east) and the feud between Athene and Poseidon over who would be the patron deity of the city (on the west). Grecian temples were oriented to the east, so I assume the birth of Athene was the more important event. The picture above shows the left side of the east sculpture. The reclining chap is said to be Dionysus, though the story of Athene's birth concerns the father of the gods, Zeus. Zeus, as you may know, had a headache, so enlisted the aid of Hephaestus to crack his head open and alleviate the pressure (you know, as one does), though Athene sprang out fully-clothed and ready for action. 

The Parthenon sculptures are fantastic works of art, of course, demonstrating the accomplishment of fifth-century BC Greek artisans, and also tell us a lot about the people of that time, specifically from the panels representing the festival. I'm not going to get into the whole debate over where they belong, as that is such a contentious subject, but suffice it to say that I'm just glad they're on public display and available for general viewing free of charge. 

(If you're interested in the vigorous debate on the subject, this site is an interesting place to start).

New look, and Anthony Trollope

Afternoon everybody!
I'm shocked to see that it's been more than three months since I last made a post on my blog here - shocked, and appalled. So I've decided to kickstart my blog now with my 50th entry, complete with a new look! I'd love to hear your thoughts on that! I'm also hoping that I can begin posting again with some degree of regularity, even if it's just short stuff, as I am posting here now.

I'm going to start, anyway, with a death. On this day in 1882, the English novelist Anthony Trollope died, leaving behind an enormous legacy that includes not only nearly 50 novels, but also the post box. 

I haven't read a Trollope novel for many years now, but have long been a fan nevertheless. There's a wonderfully intangible sense of Englishness to his works that I just can't seem to resist. Some of the criticisms I've heard point to a seemingly chocolate-box-style portrayal of an England that is quaint and charming, with little-to-no realism, but to paraphrase Henry James, there was no-one who could appreciate the so thoroughly ordinary as Trollope. 

One of these days, I'm hoping to finally getting round to reading the Barsetshire Chronicles, after a couple of aborted attempts in my early teens. One day soon...