In 1803, a play called Lacrimas was published in Berlin. The plot was complex and implausible as the plots of Shakespearean comedies, disseminated at that time in Germany thanks to the translations of August Wilhelm Schlegel. There were misunderstandings, impossible love between Muslims and Christians, and sudden plot twists that changed the parents or religion of some characters, so that love stories had a happy ending and peace and fraternity reigned between them.

"Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero." (Loosely translated, "Seize the day, put no trust in tomorrow". This sentence, especially the first words, carpe diem, arrived to our days probably meaning something different from its original meaning. We use it as a hedonistic motto, "enjoy now the pleasures of life, and don't think about the consequences", while it originally talked about not disregarding what the present offers in pursuit of an uncertain future.

I've been listening to a Lied more often than it would be reasonable these days. The usual readers know that one way to get out of my head that kind of earworms is by sharing them with you; I already shared this song years ago, but since it was just as a musical illustration and without much explanation, I gave me the all clear to talk about Abendempfindung, the most original Lied by Mozart, the best known (ok, ex-equo with Das Veilchen) and, in my view, the best. Mozart wrote it on 24 June 1787 [...]

We think that the networking is a very recent thing, but the thing is that it's something very old. Each of us had someone who gave us a helping hand, and each of us helped someone; so did our parents, and our grandparents, and we can go back as many generations as you want.

In the early afternoon on Sunday 25 I received a text from a reliable source saying: "È morta la Ludwig." The news spread soon on Twitter and was published by Austrian newspapers: mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig had died at home the day before at ninety-three. She lived a long life, and I hope her private life was as rich as her life on the stage; her career was extraordinary, and these obituaries by Arturo Reverter in Scherzo or this other by Manuel Brug in Die Welt summarize it.