Classical World News: July, 2001

GERMANY IS ALIVE WITH THE SOUND OF MUSIC

This spring and summer, Germany is truly a land of music. The country's long-standing musical history comes alive with a series of music festivals. Following is a list of highlights:

Visitors from near and far will flock to Munich from July 1st-31st for the 2001 Munich Opera Festival. The Bavarian State Opera will present no less than 16 different operas, as well as ballet productions, concerts, and recitals as part of the oldest opera festival in the world. This year's theme is "Myth Today", and in keeping with the theme, two new productions of little-known operatic masterpieces receive their premieres: Hector Berlioz's Les Troyens and Claudio Monteverdi's Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria. For details, visit www.staatstheater.bayern.de/staatsoper/homeod.htm.

THE PORK CHOP THAT KILLED MOZART

The latest theory concerning the cause of Mozart's death has nothing to do with dark strangers or jealous rivals. No, this time it's trichinosis, a disease that's caused by ingestion of the trichina worm, whose larvae infest the intestines and voluntary muscle tissue, causing symptoms such as fever, nausea, muscular pain and swelling. People usually acquire the disease by eating insufficiently cooked pork which, according to Jan V. Hirschmann of Puget Sound Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Seattle, Mozart very likely did just 44 days before his final illness. Apparently, in a letter to his wife Mozart refers to the fact that he's about to eat a couple of pork cutlets, and the normal incubation period for trichinosis--as well as Mozart's well-documented symptoms-- fit perfectly with this disease and time frame.

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