Sunday Serendipity

jace, thank you. wonderful.  came upon this at im-guitarra about regondi:

Who doesn’t know them? Paganini, Liszt, Chopin and many others. Heroes of a whole generation. All seen as prodigies, early drawn with the mark of Cain, lived without a net and double bottom and gave a bourgeois world the thrill of danger it so desperately longed for.

 

Among them was a little boy from France, who was to conquer the stages of his time with an imperfect instrument and became one of the most important representatives of the romantic guitar: Giulio Regondi.

 

Even his childhood sounds like it was invented by Ch. Dickens. Born in Geneva in 1822, his mother died at birth and so a man raised him, posing as his father. Without ever knowing if they were really connected by blood ties, he was helplessly chained to him for many years.

Giuseppe, so his name, had decided early on to turn Giulio into a prodigy with whom he could earn a lot of money. He relentlessly drove him to the guitar, locked him up in his room during the day, where, supervised by a grumpy neighbor, he had to practice the same finger exercises for hours.

So he was able to put Giulio on stage at the age of five and present “his” prodigy to an astonished audience.

To make even more money from his son, they broke up their tents in Lyon and tried their luck in Paris.

Within a very short time the little boy had a resounding success here as well. He was invited to the most important concert halls, was very well received by critics and audiences and even N. Paganini and F. Liszt became interested in the boy.

Also in the circles of guitar lovers one was enchanted by his appearance. Fernando Sor, who was fond of the “Infant Paganini” with a paternal affection, dedicated his fantasy “Souvenir d’amitié” op. 46 to the eight-year-old “Jules Regondi”.

 

But his father still didn’t have enough. In search of new sources of income, he was drawn across the canal and in May 1831 they arrived in London, one of the leading music capitals of that time.

Giulio made his debut here with Catherina Josepha Pelzer, another prodigy, who later became the doyenne of the Victorian guitar world as Madame Sidney Pratten.

To make the two children more visible on stage, they played music standing on a table. When Regondi played alone, his chair was sometimes placed on the piano. All this was arranged by a father who wanted to draw even more attention to his boy.

Of course, the audience was enthusiastic about these performances and the press praised them. Even in the Buckingham Palace the reputation of this wonder boy penetrated and so he was finally allowed to play before the queen, who, like the whole world, was enchanted by the meanwhile eight-year-old.

[…]

Carried by a wave of enthusiasm, father and son now travelled the entire kingdom and were celebrated with phrenesis everywhere.

Now the father should have finally reached the goal of his dreams, because one day he handed the child a 5-pound note and fled with all the rest of their money, allegedly several thousand pounds sterling.

He left the 12-year-old boy alone in the world, perhaps hoping that good-natured people and music lovers would take care of this little genius.

 

Left alone, Giulio fell into deep despair, but through the maternal care of friends and a loving foster family, he managed to overcome this trauma. The child prodigy became a young man who succeeded in transforming his suffering into music and who continued to conquer people’s hearts at acclaimed concerts throughout Europe.

[continues]

wapo:

After four months of campaigning, the Democratic presidential race remains wide open, with the bulk of the electorate still uncommitted, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Asked to name the candidate they currently support, 54 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents did not volunteer anyone. That figure is little changed from 56 percent in January, despite a slew of candidate announcements, vigorous campaigning in the early primary and caucus states, multiple cable television town halls and interviews and constant fundraising appeals.

Among the minority who expressed a preference, former vice president Joe Biden holds a tenuous advantage over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

[…]

The Post-ABC poll, conducted largely before Biden’s Thursday campaign announcement, asked whom respondents support in an open-ended format that did not name any of the candidates. The results show notably lower levels of support than produced in polls that ask people to pick from a list of names.

Biden tops the field with 13 percent among Democrats and Democratic-leaning adults, followed by Sanders at 9 percent and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg at 5 percent. Sens. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.) and Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) are at 4 percent, while former congressman Beto O’Rourke of Texas is at 3 percent. Sens. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) and Cory Booker (N.J.) are at 1 percent each.

Support for Biden has ticked up four percentage points since a Post-ABC poll in January that used the same open-ended format. Sanders gained five points in that time, as has Buttigieg, whose name was not volunteered by any respondents three months ago. Support for Harris has dipped four points from January.

The poll finds less than 1 percent of Democratic-leaning adults volunteering former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper, former San Antonio mayor Julián Castro and entrepreneur Andrew Yang. None of the survey’s 427 Democratic and Democratic-leaning respondents volunteered Rep. John Delaney (Md.), Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Gov. Jay Inslee (Wash.), Rep. Seth Moulton (Mass.), Rep. Tim Ryan (Ohio), Rep. Eric Swalwell (Calif.) or author Marianne Williamson.

[continues]

Evangelical Idolator

instead of a golden calf, rev frank seems to be worshiping a gilded goat

.

BiD, this what you mean?

craig, is jack okay?  KC has had some bad stuff happening lately police-wise, weather-wise, covid-wise stc. 

des moines  register:

Fresh off a four-way primary race that drew millions in outside spending, Democrat Theresa Greenfield leads Republican Sen. Joni Ernst by 3 percentage points in Iowa’s hotly contested U.S. Senate race, a new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows.
According to the poll, 46% of likely voters say they would back Greenfield if the election were held today, and 43% say they would back Ernst.
[…]
The poll, which was conducted June 7-10, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points for questions asked of the 674 likely voters in the 2020 general election and plus or minus 3.5 percentage points for those asked of 801 Iowans.

another Lincoln project one that must really make him mad

something else that will get to him bigly –  a prayer meeting going on in front of WH

wapo:

Black Lives Matter Plaza was transformed into a church Sunday morning, with thousands of mostly African American worshipers praying, protesting, kneeling and dancing near the White House after marching from the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
[…]
The Trump administration forcibly removed protesters from the area near Lafayette Square on June 1, ahead of President Trump’s photo opportunity at the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church. On Sunday, that show of federal force was replaced with prayer.
[…]
That same ground near St. John’s was transformed by afternoon into a kaleidoscope of prayers, chants, singing and preaching from Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Christian faith leaders who joined in a multifaith effort to bless the protest movement. Among them was the Rev. William Barber II, one of the country’s best-known progressive clergy, who called for a “moral reconstruction” that pulls in people of all backgrounds and races and forces sweeping policy changes rather than moderate tweaks.
[…]
By evening, the energy had taken a turn, with some shouting matches between protesters and individual police officers, and angrier chants. A crowd of hundreds gathered as close to the White House as they could get, listening to a speaker yell through a microphone, and yelling back, “Trump, Pence out now! Trump, Pence out now!”

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