Adventures in Italian Opera with Fred Plotkin

Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò (NYU) 24 West 12th Street, New York City, NY, United States

A Conversation with Loretta Di Franco The sixth Adventure in Italian Opera with Fred Plotkin of this season features soprano Loretta Di Franco, who has had one of the longest careers in Metropolitan Opera history with 929 performances there between 1961 and 1995. She continues to work for the Met as an Italian-language diction coach. She and Fred Plotkin will discuss her…

(Un)forgotten Neighbors: Memorial Stones in Lutherstadt Wittenberg

Goethe-Institut New York 30 Irving Place, New York City, NY, United States

Reinhard Pester and Mario Dittrich will talk about Stolpersteine artist Gunter Demnig, present the work of the Initiative Stolpersteine Wittenberg and relay some of the exemplary stories behind these memorial stones. Since the 1990s, artist Gunter Demnig has been embedding Stolpersteine (literally stumbling stones) into the sidewalks in front of the last known addresses of Holocaust victims. These small, brass…

Julia Den Boer, piano

Italian Academy (Columbia) 1161 Amsterdam Avenue, New York City, NY, United States

Music of Giulia Lorusso, Luigi Nono, Giacinto Scelsi, and Claudia Jane Scroccaro (a world premiere) Giacinto Scelsi., Action Music IV, VI, VII and Aitsi Giulia Lorusso, Deserts (2018) Claudia Jane Scroccaro, (S)toccata (2019) Luigi Nono, ...Sofferte Onde Serene... French-American pianist Julia Den Boer is a strong advocate of contemporary music. Based in New York city, she performs internationally as a…

The Black Experience in French Cinema – Film Festival and Conference

La Maison Française (NYU) 16 Washington Mews, New York City, NY, United States

Organized by Isabelle Boni-Claverie (French film director, screenwriter, visiting professor at NYU in Spring 2019) and Frédéric Viguier (Institute of French Studies, GSAS) Presented by Institute of French Studies and Cinema Studies APRIL 11 - COMING TO TERMS WITH THE COLONIAL EXPERIENCE The first film ever made by black people, Afrique sur Seine, was directed in 1956 by a group of African…

Beyond Mourning?

Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò (NYU) 24 West 12th Street, New York City, NY, United States

A Reading of Eugenio Montale's Arletta Poems A lecture by Adele Bardazzi, University of Oxford Focusing on Eugenio Montale’s ‘ciclo di Arletta’, in particular La casa dei doganieri  (Le occasioni, 1939), this lecture will discuss the nature of the poetic subject’s mourning for Arletta and how it challenges traditional views on elegy. Mourning in Montale’s poetry is intermittent but, nevertheless,…

Concert: Swingin’ to Freedom

Bohemian National Hall 321 E 73rd St., New York, NY, United States

  In celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution of 1989, swing singer Katerina Steinerova has been invited to present her program "Swingin' to Freedom." She will be accompanied by remarkable jazz pianist Jiri Ruzicka. Katerina Steinerova, musical theater actress, singer, choreographer, and swing and tap teacher, recorded in 2015 her debut album "I Love Peggy Lee." Upon…

Out in East Berlin: Lesbians and Gays in the GDR

Goethe-Institut New York 30 Irving Place, New York City, NY, United States

Unlike the Federal Republic, by 1968 the German Democratic Republic’s penal code had de-criminalized homosexuality. But the “workers’ and farmers’ state” did not exactly welcome its gay and lesbian citizens with open arms; their sexuality was taboo and they were often marginalized from public life. The generation of gay men and women who had seen the war and were now…

Proust 2019

La Maison Française (Columbia) Buell Hall, 515 West 116th Street, New York City, NY, United States

In 1919, Marcel Proust was officially recognized as a great writer when the second volume of his magnum opus was awarded France's most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt. This conference, in honor of the centenary of Proust's Goncourt, brings together writers, scholars and translators to discuss the reasons Proust is now, 100 years later, more popular and influential than…

Workshop: Let’s Swing and Tap!

Bohemian National Hall 321 E 73rd St., New York, NY, United States

Join the swing and tap dance lecture led by accomplished Czech choreographer Katerina Steinerova. Katerina will show how swing and tap dance are taught across the ocean on the old continent. Workshop participants will be guided through their first encounter with the swing and tap dance genre and shown the essential techniques. Steinerova is a musical theater actress, singer, choreographer,…

“Wackersdorf”: Film Screening and Conversation between Oliver Haffner and Christian Martin

Deutsches Haus NYU 42 Washington Mews, New York City, NY, United States

Deutsches Haus at NYU, in partnership with the Heinrich Böll Foundation, presents a screening of the film Wackersdorf (2018), a true story of community, taking a stand against injustice and corruption, and being a local-level politician taking on a much stronger governing power. Oliver Haffner, director of the film, will be present at the screening. Following the screening, Oliver Haffner…