MESE HABBAL

The Hungarian State Folk Ensemble's nativity programme counts down to the night of the birth of Jesus, with scenes that are sometimes comic and other times heart-warming.

One thing we know for certain about the 21st century is that it will be when the survivors of the Holocaust take their last breath. Every single one of them. Slowly but surely, they are leaving us to our own devices. “Do we want to forget what happened, as if it were a bad dream, or do we want to accept the events as human civilization’s greatest trauma?” the author Péter Esterházy once asked.

Mozart was insatiably in love with life. He embraced everything considered “sinful”: wine, cards, billiards. And his passion extended to musical ornaments: flowery acciaccaturas, trills, cadences others dared not risk, and chromatic runs. But there can be no doubt the main objects of his desire were women. He dedicated several of his masterpieces to one or other of his lovers, who were thus immortalised by these concert and opera arias.