Jelena Ćirić

Oh how cool, humanities finally got a micro-validation from big tech. Not everything's lost, you guys! 🥲

He's prob being attacked by the very same people who admire their leader for saying things like "I can do whatever the fuck I want".

😍 Even though she was vocally past her prime and not as brilliant as in the 1990s Bayreuth production, even just seeing her blows my mind every single time!

With this regime anything is possible…

Thank you!! 😂

Omg, "ein stolzes Weib," cringe level Siegfried.

The most German line in Wagner's Ring: Lass uns beraten. (The Rhinemaidens, Götterdämmerung, Act III)

Opera: the only place in German language where the word Weib is still regularly seen, for better or worse.

I remember watching him on video in Lohengrin. Sounded not impressive, but completely fine. But Siegfried... Just too thin (tin?) of a voice for my taste.

Update: haven't stopped watching. (Thanks to Wagner and Nylund, not Vogt 🙃) Just realized, btw, that I've always found Siegfried and Brünnhilde's love story gut-wrenching and abhorrent, while at the same time deeply enjoying Siegmund and Sieglinde's.

It's the age-old romanticization of rurality, where country life is pure whereas cities are corrupt. The idea, of course, being successfully instrumentalized by the right. (And not just in the US.) No wonder tradwives never film their TikToks in cities. Not kinky enough without hens and haystacks.

Am I the only opera lover who just can't seem to stomach Klaus Florian Vogt in any Heldentenor role? Will probably have to stop listening to Siegfried from Zürich just because of him.

A highly intelligent yet essentially failed mathematician who's getting involved in a big project envisaged by two great empires on the eve of a world war 😬

Remember folks: if you have any small amount of artistic talent, any sex appeal, or can make your friends laugh, the richest man on earth is crying screaming throwing up because he can’t be you.

It’s fun to think about the surgeon who will botch your surgery 20 years from now and what he’s doing at this moment. He just ran all his homework through ChatGPT. He just read that article about vaccines and autism at the CDC website. He just watched an Instagram video about the moon landing hoax.

At the risk of being Captain Obvious, I'd throw in Fischer-Dieskau.

Box up the Fox: The Cunning Little Vixen Review (Staatsoper Stuttgart, 14 Nov 2025) Paweł Konik (Forester), Claudia Muschio (Vixen), Itzeli del Rosario (Dachshund, Woodpecker), Oscar Encinas (Rooster), Staatsopernchor Stuttgart. Foto: Martin Sigmund Foxes having sex, hens that clu…

Stuttgarter "Die schlaue Füchsin". (Review written in a futile effort not to entirely forget how to write.)
operasighs.wordpress.com/2025/11/16/c... #stgtfüchsin @staatsoper-stgt.bsky.social

Example: the well-intentioned but terribly made tearjerker "3 1/2 Stunden" that's trending these days on ARD Mediathek versus any of the unabashedly weird and weirdly beautiful (if flawed) TV shows like Dark, Kleo, Kassandra. Important lesson: never try to act normal!

A footnote on German contemporary culture: they can't craft an ordinary, well-made mainstream cultural product (like a pop song or a simple Sat-night film) if their life depended on it. But what they excel at are things that don't resort to, that never even try to appeal to normality.

They’re literally socially constructing gender out of sand and metal after a decade of tut-tutting about women being adult human females ONLY

In just over 6 m of working in a retirement home in 🇩🇪, I already met several refugees, kids of refugees or merely young immigrants on a volunteering program, giving away A LOT of their time on a job that no fascist would ever do. Why aren't there more reports on that in the media? 🧐

Note to learners of German: if any work of fiction appears too difficult to read in German, just switch to one or two pages of Robert Musil. Makes anything else look easy as pie in an Augenblick.

Old Soviet joke for today:

A man walks into a newsstand every day, looks around, and leaves.

After a long time of this, the owner says “Can I help you find something?”

“I’m looking for the obituaries.”

“The obituaries are in the back of the newspaper, comrade.”

“Not the one I’m looking for.”

If you happen to overhear anyone looking for a servant to pour them Sekt or, idk, scratch their back while they are(n't) watching Wagner, drop me a note pls! Looks like my only chance ever to get there in person 😂

Curtain call at #stgtwal, super interesting! @staatsoper-stgt.bsky.social

Umschlag des Buches "Zur Verteidigung der Demokratie" von Thomas Mann. Das Buch liegt auf einem gelben Tisch.

Ich frage mich, ob ich das im Original lesen kann. Nur einen Weg, es herauszufinden. 🤔

The color choice too is very... unorthodox. Makes one think of bubble gum 🧐

And it was! For half an hour before it was gone.

Hausgemachter Kuchen mit Obst auf einem Herd

Hab' einen Kuchen (zweimal!) gemacht. Eier, Quark, Mehl, Bourbon Vanille, Öl, Backpulver, Obst.

Oh I've heard Canticles of Ecstasy and Ordo Virtutum from this box set but had no idea of the new age sales pitch.