your summer reading list in our continuing series 100 german month streets we thought a romp through 99 he's berlin in the seasonally apropos novel made the summer night . well it's one of the most beloved all present around just at the very rigoletto the tale of the skirt chasing duke of mantua who seduced is the innocent daughter all of a court jester never fails to draw a crowd it's melodious it's tragic and never short on sexy which is why a new production is always an event like for instance the recent premier here at berlin state off with michael fabiano in the role of the duke.

and here he is in the flash michael fabiano one of the world's most celebrated tenors i'm the risk taking 10 or pike films welcome thank you very very little thank you for joining and that was of course too short michael so i'm going to ask you to take a bit of a risk here and sing a few more bars for us if you'd be so my god. oh my goodness that's absolutely amazing i think we need a clapping for that you don't even need a microphone for your performance of a duke of mine to write in do you want to add to what i shall about if i'm going to talk for you well for rigoberto it's one of verities 3 triumvirate operas of a top a top yacht that he will that says middle europe but what's important about it is it's a story of how deceit and treachery can get the worst of us even if we think we're doing something right it's even if we want to get back at somebody it's really bad

very tragic and what makes a great performance for you. a great performance for me is. when i feel that i've connected on a deep level to the character with the with which i'm in body and for the evening and that means i synthesize great music with the words the syntax the text that i'm communicating to the public and if i do that a lot of study there's a lot of study involved in opera but when i feel good about it i know that i've connected to the role i know that i've connected to the character speaking of risks you're a pilot of small aircraft in your spare time which of course is very frightening for some people is flying a kid into thinking in a way 12 years ago it's a great question i think that flying is the same in the same way of saying i think flying is a way for me to be one tracked living in the moment when i was saying what's so critical for me is reminding myself that the only job i have to do is communicate incredible music to the public so i'm currently being

a pilot one of the only obligation i have when flying is to fly the damn plane that's it and what i'm up there i clear my head i get the opportunity to just be in the clouds and up in the sky and that's it informs my singing informs me that i have to be present in the moment as an opera singer and nothing about anything else that's fantastic and obviously it's as much of a passion as singing can be a passion for for you how much influence have the great tenors for instance the ones we know obviously from the past the. go had on your career ambitions and how easy or difficult is it to create your to develop your own style. great question i'd say 1st of all it's important to know the past in order to be the future in the present so i can't be a great singer without understanding what came before me just like i think in government and politics if we don't know our history we can't govern so in singing

i have to know that all the have to know karoly i have to know domingo and i respect all of them and i respect their talents but i have to build something unique and special now for the public for perpetuity and that's what i'm doing and is perfection ever the goal or is that your teacher talked about the art of imperfection in the voice i think that there is this wonderful line where one has to be excellent that perfection is too far but good is not enough and i always try to fall in that street of excellence and the moment when i try to go to do the line of perfection and tips lambing back into good and it takes a lot of work just to get back to excellence excellence is what i strive for ok so far it seems like you're specializing mostly not entirely but mostly an italian and french opera and your debut album obviously is looking at vandy and on it's set to a wonderful job there just released in may after any other bishops to get into the

german composers i love german opera i don't know if my voice is really well suited to it i sing a lot of it is a vocal decision it's a vocal decision largely it's a vocal decision there's a lot of wagner that i could sing some day i don't know if i will i think a lot of those operas i don't go to they come to the artist i think there's a moment in time when certain music just arrives because it's the right time this is the synthesis the stars collide and i don't know when that'll happen if it'll happen i will sing a lot of russian opera to intend to. german out of opera don't know it's also is it a language question as well you know with russian no no as a musician it's important for me to be able to see. being in pronounce whatever language i work in and understand the text and why the words exist in a sort of that's not the barrier for introducing me it's the construction of the music michael fabiano you'll be performing that he again in madrid in july then and we are in scotland i believe at the met in new york best of luck with your very

busy schedule we of course look forward to seeing you back in berlin thank you so leave early next year for being here carmen thank you very much for joining me. on now to an even younger upcoming star on the piano and breathtaking technique emotional depth drive and new goals are just some of the qualities the scribe to don a dark and german greek pianist garnered ovations at the recent sure one fest in bahrain where she focused on the other shulman namely clara whose 200th birthday is being celebrated this year. night durcan has been called a poet at the piano makes her a fitting artist to interpret clash whose music seems filled with poetry.

cloud her and her husband. were laid to rest in bonn. their grave is a place of pilgrimage for lovers of the should months music. the house where schumann died is in a suburb of bonn at that time a senatorial for the mentally ill today it's a tourist attraction the shoeman museum and the home base of the schumann fest. this year the festival motto was dear clocker with a focus on clash woman in her bicentennial year. as you can see it's very hard to stop because the musical line is a whole long and i think that's very characteristic of her music and her commissions are very often technically very demanding as well because she wrote them for herself and we other caliph have to him and it's to play them i think that

people have now really rediscovered her music and and see that it's not just the music of all but among the wife but really a very old composer that can stand alone and i don't like him is a versatile artist as demonstrated on her recordings of piano concertos by mozart amende and so on and works for solo piano buyable that schumann and c.p.e. but that won her an international classical music award. she also plays in a duo with her younger sister keep the lead dark and in 2015 the sisters founded the mali vote. international music festival on the island of los bus where they spent their summers as children. now making her home near berlin tonight visits lesbos regularly to recharge her batteries and run her festival. i think it's even more of course the most powerful thing that music can do is unite

and connect people because it's the universal language that anyone can understand no matter if there is an actual language barrier. sharing emotions connecting people giving hope and i just can means that letter. from music to literature and as we approach midsummer night it seemed only right to find one of our $100.00 german must reads that fits the bill and bingo all of a thames novel midsummer night is an entertaining tribute to the quirkiness of post unification berlin and one little have you giggling in your face look. sad so margot. 96 isn't it saxon when someone knows about final winds when they can tell you about every great every since and. of course events

but could you be seduced by someone with an intimate knowledge of the potato. below their current readers talking about potatoes well in midsummer night right now but soon the narrator's uncle has a special gift for potatoes he can identify every variety of potato by taste even if they're boiled or fried. what's that you say not a turn on well it gets more ridiculous from there the narrator a floundering author is commissioned to write a 12 page magazine article about potatoes his quest for spot knowledge takes him down a rabbit hole of misadventures in the newly were unified. he goes searching for a dead professor's potato archive winds up with the worst haircut of his life and

meets tina a sex phone operator who wrote her master's thesis on the potato in german literature. i'm sure you also know the potato was considered and for d.c. ak a botanist in nuremberg in the year 634 writes that he had potatoes baked for him and having eaten his meal suddenly ran after his cook she left and i shot a quick glance at her legs. the potato in its glorious lameness makes the whole areas leitmotif through the wrong and raunchy city of berlin midsummer night's x. place in the 1990 s. when east and west berlin are still using after the fall of the wall it's also about the longest day of the year 17 hours of sunlight when people are going crazy and almost anything seems possible 7. well that's all for now but we'll leave you with some more impressions of michael fabiano india's

ladies' man role the duke of mantua in the legal talks all the best until next time and she's. oh she was. loath.

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have to get through the break with that if. the united states has released new photos it claims show iranian forces were involved in attacks on 2 oil tankers last week the photos reportedly were taken by a u.s. helicopter in the region iran has the allegations as tensions continue to mount the pentagon has announced it will deploy.