Der Abschied

It was a salutary experience visiting the Hôtel des Bains on the Lido in Venice last week. The site of Gustav von Aschenbach’s demise, it is one of the most evocative places in the literary and cinematic world. Full of Mahlerian resonances, triggered both by Mann and Visconti alike, this truly magnificent vacation palace – a sort of melancholy precursor to Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel – met its end in 2010. The art nouveau beast, host to Georg Trakl, Peter Altenberg, Adolf Loos and Arthur Schnitzler in 1913 and Diaghilev on his final, tragic trip to Venice in 1929, looms over the Lido like a beautiful if now redundant whale. Evidence of its conversion into apartments, three years after the announcement, is scant if not non-existent.

The stretches of sand on which Tadzio and his brute, dark-haired friend wrestled before Aschenbach’s last gasp, are now host to grandmothers and grandfathers in cardigans playing canasta, drinking espresso. Orange plastic chairs have replaced the elegant beach huts and, rather than eating strawberries, groups of locals and tourists – yes Polish, Russian, French and English voices mingle as they did 100 years ago – drink Aperol and Campari under faux-tropical umbrellas.

One youth in blue speedos kicks sand at his friend. No more the demure striped bathing suits with red bows. There is no linen. There are no lace parasols. I peered over my neighbour’s shoulder and saw reports of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's death in the paper – ‘a respectfully shocked world received the news’. Love in the Time of Cholera indeed, or perhaps more Autumn of the Patriarch. Other things remain the same too: the eerie grey wash of the Adriatic, the bleaching sun, the dead heat. There is a brackish, discoloured plainness to it all. It’s a good place to have an ending.

And that is what I’m going to do, as this will be the last post on Entartete Musik for a while… maybe even a final full stop. I started this online adventure seven years ago with a review of a production of Pelléas et Mélisande at the Royal Opera House. Then the blog was called Mr Norris Changes Trains. Since then I've changed its name, written 2,100 posts and attracted over 1.5 million visitors. I’ve made friends, met hugely interesting characters and have relished exploring the highways and byways of Central European (and other) culture, so much of which was banned during the Nazi era, including Thomas Mann's novella and Mahler's Fifth Symphony.

Now other things beckon. A book, perhaps, but certainly more programme notes, talks, newspaper articles, occasional radio appearances, thoughts on Austrian wine and so on. While I’d love to report it all, I just can’t. So if you want to read more of my stuff, then you can find me in the programmes at the Salzburg Festival, Wigmore Hall and the Royal Opera House or in my occasional articles for the Independent on Sunday.

In the coming weeks I’m writing for Toby Spence’s Wardsbrook Concerts and I've just signed off an article about The Cunning Little Vixen for Garsington, a Moses und Aron piece for Welsh National Opera, notes for the Aldeburgh Festival, an exciting project for the Oxford Lieder Festival's complete survey of Schubert's songs and a gorgeous embarrassment of Richard Strauss riches. I’m currently planning an extended article about the man and his music and writing about the tone poems for this summer's Salzburg Festival, while my A to Z of Strauss continues over at the Royal Opera House News pages and I’ll be on BBC Radio 3 tonight talking about Arabella. Please follow me on Twitter, if you don't already, where I’ll announce any other public talks and the like. But if you come looking here, you might just find an empty deckchair.

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