Sir Thomas Beecham conducts Messiah!

There are many recordings of Messiah by Georg Friedrich Haendel,  a man who spoke little English being German serving a British King George II who disliked the English and England, spoke next to no English being the Prince of Hannover. They probably spoke German to each other, though the King had learned French as a first language.

 King George II (1683-1760)

Georg Friedrich Haendel (1685-1759)

Sir Thomas gives us a rendition of the Messiah unlike any other, in my opinion the best one you can hear.
Unless our friend and music expert David N. can point me to a better rendition, will see what he has to say.

The recording in question is from 1959 with Jennifer Vyvyan, Soprano, Monica Sinclair, Mezzo-Soprano, the great Canadian Tenor John Vickers and equally great Bass, Giorgio Tozzi. Beecham gave this recording a tempo and he feels the words of the text which he manages to translate into a
dynamic recording.

I love hearing this recording while we are decorating the Christmas tree.

Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961)

Phase one is polishing all the Christmas Tree balls, we have 30 of them and then we also have to polish the medallions of various seasonal flowers. Then put up the tree and select the ornaments to go on, there is quite the collection all very different and from various parts of the world we have visited.

What is terribly nice is that each ball has the word Christmas and the year and it always brings back memories of where we were on that year starting with 1979 in Ottawa, 1986 Mexico City, 1989 Cairo, 1993 Chicago, 1999 Warsaw, 2007 Rome.

This year the tree went up on 8 December the Immaculate Conception on the Catholic Calendar, a great spectacle we attended each year in Rome at Piazza di Spagna where the column to the Virgin stands, a column taken from a temple from antiquity and the statue itself is Venus. The Pope comes from the Vatican crosses the City in a great parade escorted by the Carabinieri and all the congregations gather in the Piazza in their various uniforms and banners. The clue of the spectacle is when the Rome Firemen (Vigili) get into their cherry picker to hoist the great garland of flowers blessed by the Holy Father to the arms of the Venus turned Virgin and Mother of God.

The monument is in front of the Royal Embassy of Spain to the Holy See on the Piazza and the Ambassador of His Most Catholic Majesty the King of Spain waives from the balcony.

We have also decided this year that for Christmas day we will go to the Café at the National Arts Centre, they have a very nice set menu. Christmas Eve will be quiet at home and have a nice dinner with our Xmas Dachshunds.

Here are some pictures.

This year Will decided to put up this paper cut model of St-Nick. We got this in Dresden or Munich many years ago but never used it, very traditional and European. I cannot remember being in Dresden for the Christmas Market, the one in Munich is fantastic.

our Nutcracker from East Germany c.1979, they do not make ones like this anymore.

The tree is up now remains to decorate it.

Here are some traditional Austrian lead decoration hand painted, a decorated tree and St-Nick on his horse made by the Wilhelm Schweizer company.

More of the W. Schweizer company work, very typical of what you see in Austria and Bavaria at Christmas time.

A fraction of what has to be polished before it is put up on the tree. Neiman Marcus still sells them.

Christmas 1979 always put at the top of the tree.

A Winter Bouquet for Will's Birthday, the white flowers are called Nerine, there is some Heather and Boronia.

Almost run over by Pope motorcade, call my lawyer!

If you are a Christian you will have heard of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, Pope Pius IX proclaimed that Mary was born without sin and therefore was pure enough to be the mother of Jesus. Up to 1860 this was a Catholic belief, you could subscribe to it or not, however in 1860 the Pope was feeling a little insecure, the Italians had revolted against his rule as Head of State of central Italy and Garibaldi was marching on Rome with his army. So the Pope did two things, first he proclaimed that he was infallible, meaning that when he speaks he is never wrong, it is the same as if God himself spoke. Not a bad trick really when you think of it. The second thing he did was to make the Immaculate Conception church dogma, so you now have to believe it, it is dogma, no discussion period.

So today 8 December is the Immacolata, a major Roman Catholic Church Holiday, it is the first day of Xmas shopping for Italians and the day all the religious congregations in Rome gather on Piazza di Spagna at the Spanish steps to put flowers at the foot of the column to the Immaculate Virgin Mary, sex should be this clean in other words. The column itself is located between the designer Valentino's HQ, the Sacred College for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Royal Embassy of Spain to the Holy See (see photo) with banners bearing the Coat of arms of His Most Catholic Majesty the King of Spain and the Pope. At the foot of the column you have statues of these nice Jewish patriarchs deep in reflection, Ezechiel, Moses, King David, Isaiah who are considered de facto Roman Catholics.
So we went to Piazza di Spagna to see the congregations and other religious orders with their banners and hear them sing and pray to the Virgin Mary on top her column, noticed that FIAT the car maker had sent a large bouquet of flowers, so did other large Italian manufacturers and also the Rome bus and metro company ATAC. We went to lunch and at 3:30pm we walked back towards Piazza Torre Argentina however there was one small problem, from the Tiber River all along Via Tomacelli and through Via Condotti barricades had been set up by the police of Rome. The Officer informed us that we could not cross at all, the Pope's motorcade was coming. So I looked down the street towards the river at Cavour bridge and then look up towards Piazza di Spagna and saw at the end a wall of humanity in the Piazza and all up the grand staircase, thousands all waiting for the Pope to arrive. The streets in this area of Rome are large enough for a big carriage and 4 horses, a narrow area. We still had 30 minutes before the Holy Father would pass by, so we decided to walk towards the river, in front of the Mausoleum of Emperor Augustus there was a break in the barricades and few people around, would the Pope stop his motorcade at the mausoleum to bless Augustus who was made a God by the Senate of Rome, he lived at the same time as the Virgin Mary, not likely, but we did cross the street quickly while the police was not looking and avoiding the approaching Pope mobile with the 6 beefy Swiss guards running alongside.

Now when Jean-Paul II was pope he use to get into the cherry picker basket and he was hoisted all the way to the top of the column to deposit his flowers, nowadays Pope Benedict sends a nice Vigili (firemen) up to do the job. We did make it to the theater on time.