CONCERT AND ROUND TABLE: Joaquín Rodrigo: An Anniversary Celebration

King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center 53 Washington Square South, New York, United States

Concert and Discussion panel on the life and works of the Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo, with Walter A. Clark (UC Riverside), Isabel Perez Dobarro, Antoni Pizà (Foundation for Iberian Music), Douglas Riva, Javier Suárez-Pajares (Universidad Complutense), and special guest Cecilia Rodrigo, daughter of Joaquín Rodrigo (founder of Ediciones Joaquín Rodrigo and Fundación Victoria y Joaquín Rodrigo). The panel aims to give a comprehensive…

Book Tour: Palace Complex: A Stalinist Skyscraper, Capitalist Warsaw And a City Transfixed, By Michal Murawski

Columbia International Affairs Building 420 W. 118th St., New York, NY, United States

The Palace of Culture and Science is a massive Stalinist skyscraper that was "gifted" to Warsaw by the Soviet Union in 1955. Framing the Palace's visual, symbolic, and functional prominence in everyday life as a sort of obsession, locals joke that their city suffers from a "Palace of Culture complex." In his book that takes this “complex” as its title,…

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…