The Met Live: Puccini’s Manon Lescaut

The Met Live: Puccini’s Manon Lescaut

by | Mar 14, 2016

The redoubtable Metropolitan Opera of New York has done it again!  A carefully crafted and finely balanced production of one of Giacomo Puccini’s twelve operas, Manon Lescault, a work in four acts composed in 1893, was offered for one night only on March 9, 2016 and shown simultaneously in 1,400 movie theaters in 50 countries throughout the world.  It was an operatic gem not to be missed. Puccini’s tragic love story is based on the 1731 novel L’histoire du chavalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut by Abbé Prévos.  In 1884, a French...

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Gemalto presents real Enigma machine along with the story

Gemalto presents real Enigma machine along with the story

by | Mar 9, 2016

March 2016, RSA, San Francisco - After hours spending on the show floor at RSA conference and the talks about security, vulnerability, encryption and authentication I stopped at the Gemalto booth in the North Hall of Moscone Convention Center to listen the presentation. Scott Meltzer from Gemalto was talking about the history of famous encrypting machine Enigma. The company also presented the real 1946 original Enigma machine (NEMA) at the booth. That was a Swiss, 4-rotor model with a movable reflector, built for the Swiss Army in...

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Fathom presents Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody

Fathom presents Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody

by | Mar 2, 2016

Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody was written 40 years ago by Freddie Mercury. It is a song that put the band on the top of music arena. It has spent 14 weeks at number one, giving it the fourth longest stay at the top of the chart. Bohemian Rhapsody is in a list of the all-time best sellers, with 2.36 million copies sold. It is a six-minute suite of the style called progressive rock that abandons the danceable beat that defines earlier styles and is more likely to experiment with compositional structure, instrumentation, harmony, rhythm,...

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Buffet and woodwinds changing with the times

Buffet and woodwinds changing with the times

by | Mar 1, 2016

Buffet, the storied French manufacturer of woodwind musical instruments, including oboes, clarinets, flutes, saxophones and bassoons, refreshed its name and look this year. At the NAMM show, visitors to  their booth had a chance to see a name change as well as a new brand logo for Buffet Crampon USA. This is the first change to their iconic woodwind logo in over 170 years. The company decided to make its new look for the 190th anniversary of Buffet Crampon and 90th anniversary of Julius Keilwerth, the German saxophone manufacturer...

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