music | wordsfromanneli

September 1, 2025
by wordsfromanneli 44 Comments

Rusalka at the Sydney Opera House

Did you know that the Sydney Opera House (in Australia) is a UNESCO World Heritage site? It is located on Bennelong Point overlooking Sydney Harbour and is known, among other things, for its “unparalleled design and construction.” UNESCO, in case you don’t know what all those initials stand for, is the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. The idea is that sites included as World Heritage Sites are meant to be protected by participating countries, in hopes of preserving their unique and wondrous qualities.

Some other UNESCO World Heritage sites are the pyramids, the Acropolis, temples in the Angkor area in Cambodia, Pisa, the Colosseum, and there are many others.

Danish designer, Jorn Utzon, won the international competition for the design of the Sydney Opera House in 1957, but the construction of the building had many problems, not necessarily his fault.

Those sail-like structures, when seen from a different angle, are a bit like scoops or ears. Made of concrete, they, alone, would be a challenge to build. The building is supported by 588 concrete piers, sunk as much as 82 feet below sea level. The specs are amazing and if you’re interested in finding out more, check out Sydney Opera House on Wikipedia.

The Sydney Opera House was not completed until 1973. On October 20th of that year, it was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth ll.

My friend who provided this photo, taken from one of the ferries in Sydney Harbour, attended a recent performance of Antonin Dvorak’s opera Rusalka. I immediately thought of one of my favourite arias of that opera, The Song to the Moon, but my version had a singer from many days gone by performing it. In this recent presentation, the soprano who sang that aria was Nicole Car. If you would like to hear her sing, please check out this youtube link. I hope you enjoy it. I did.

September 14, 2021
by wordsfromanneli 27 Comments

Pigs, Music, Books

We know that pigs are smart.

I read somewhere that pigs like music, especially Mozart’s compositions. While this piece is not by Mozart, it is a German song often sung by community choirs, so maybe that inspired the pig to learn to play it. It is called “Komm, Trost der Welt” (Come, Comfort of the World), and refers to the night and how it brings consolation, respite, and relief to many who work hard all day long and have a lot of cares.

You can see that I used the music sheet that the pig is playing from as part of the cover of my novel “Julia’s Violinist.”

The pig is not a character in my book, but once he learns to play the song, I’ll teach him to read so he can enjoy “Julia’s Violinist.”

You can buy this novel for less than the price of a hamburger at amazon if you have Kindle, or at smashwords.com if you have any other kind of e-reader. Just click on the image of the book on the sidebar of this blog.