Saturday, 4 August 2018

'EL CALL DE GIRONA': THE MEDIEVAL JEWISH QUARTER

The Grandma visits Girona
After visiting Brussel in Belgium, Claire Fontaine & The Grandma have travelled to Girona. They want to visit the city, especially the Call, the Jewish quarter where there is an important museum: El Museu d'Història dels Jueus.

Both friends are visiting the city and they are knowing more things about the Jewish community which was very important during the Medieval Age and which is studied and remembered nowadays. During the visit, they have been able to discover important Jewish characters of Girona and they have tasted some kosher wine from Capçanes, El Priorat.

They're going to spend all the weekend in Girona enjoying its places and its people. Next Monday, The Grandma is going to continue with her English studies and she's going to start reading a new book.

More information: Girona, Jewish city

Girona was founded by the Iberians, expanded by the Romans, who named it Gerunda, conquered by the Visigoths, then Moors, and finally by Charlemagne. Charlemagne incorporated Girona into Catalonia. By the 12th century, it was home to a large Jewish community.  

Rabbi Moses ben Nahman Girondi, better known as Nahmanides or Ramban headed one of the most important Kabbalistic schools in Europe here. He was selected to advocate the Jewish position in the Barcelona Disputation of 1263 by King Jaume I. This was a debate in the Grand Royal Palace between the Ramban and Pau Cristia, a Jew who had converted to Catholicism. The purpose of this debate was to convince the Jews to covert to Christianity. Nahmanides prevailed, but in 1492, the Jews were expelled from Girona.

The Grandma visits the Jewish Call
Some Jewish families chose to sell their properties to Christians before leaving Girona. Other members of the community believed they would return one day. They blocked off their properties and streets in hopes of reclaiming them in the future.

The Christian neighbors who were left behind were reluctant to move into these vacant homes for fear of being labeled secret Jews by the Catholic Church. As a result, the homes of the Jewish ghetto or Call, derived from the Hebrew Kahal meaning community, remained unoccupied for 500 years.

Over time, the people who lived near the Call built new structures, encroaching over the old houses. These construction projects gradually expanded, totally covering and entombing the vacant Jewish properties. This trend continued through the 18th century. With time, the Jewish Call was completely buried under the subsequent construction projects surrounding it.


The residents of Girona entirely forgot that a Jewish community had once existed there. The first clue reappeared in the 19th century, when a railway line was being built from Barcelona to France. When the construction crew dug through Montjuïc (Mount Juic=Mountain of the Jews), 20 tombstones with Hebrew inscriptions were unearthed. Except for a few archaeologists, no one really took note of this discovery.

During the centuries following the Jewish expulsion, Girona had developed beyond the old city walls. For most of this time, the new neighborhoods were considered the most desirable. 

Claire Fontaine visits the Girona's Jewish Museum
In the 1970s, the old town of Girona began to be gentrified. Mr. Josep Tarres i Fontan, a Catalan poet, was one of the people involved with rehabbing it. He purchased several 11th century buildings with the intention of building a restaurant. As work started on one of his buildings, the remains of Nahmanides’ yeshiva were discovered.

The discovery of such an important Kabbalistic site sparked the beginning of an exemplary model of preservation and education of a Jewish site in Catalonia.

The mission of the Nahmanides Institute for Jewish Studies is rehabilitating, studying and promoting the history of Girona’s Jewish community. Some efforts to accomplish these goals include offering grants to graduate students who wish to delve into such topics as family trees, Jewish lineages, and the lives of Jewish women. A specialized library is free and available to all who wish to use its resources.


The museum and institute together comprise what is known as the Bonastruc ça Porta Centre. Bonastruc ça Porta is Catalan for Nahmanides. The Bonastruc ça Porta Centre is located on the site of Nahmanide’s yeshiva. In its courtyard is an ancient excavated water cistern.

The governing body of the Jewish community was called the Aljama. The Call was self-administered by Jews, and taxes were paid directly to the king of Catalonia. The current structure is not the original house that he lived in anymore. This newer structure was built with recycled stones from the medieval homes that were torn down to make space for it. Seven stones with hewed impressions for mezuzahs were incorporated into this structure. One sits just inside the well.

Claire & The Grandma the Girona's Jewish Museum
From the museum exhibits, we know that Jews were merchants, bookbinders, and businessmen. We had assumed that they spoke Ladino but according to last studies, the vernacular of Girona’s Jews was Catalan.

The Ladino, or Judeo-Spanish, or Sefardi, is a language that was born after the expulsion of the fifteenth century. It was formed with a base of medieval Castillian, with the addition of words from all the different parts of the Iberian Peninsula from which the Jews departed in 1492. Hebrew was used for prayers and scholarship. In the museum’s section about the professions of Girona’s Jews, there is a page from a medical manuscript written in Hebrew.

The most interesting information in Girona’s Jewish Museum was gleaned from two archives. The archive of Girona has records of property transfers dating back to 1284. These documents have helped map out the Call, and pinpoint where Jewish properties were located. Girona’s archive helped identify the site of the synagogue and Nahmanides’ yeshiva. The archive of Girona’s Inquisition lists all the Jews who converted to Catholicism. Their Jewish names were recorded, as well as the new names they adopted when they became Christians.


The most amazing item on exhibit is a priceless Torat ha-Adam by Nahmanides, printed in 1595 in Venice.

The most interesting about this museum and institute is the rigor of scholarship and partnership with such institutions as the Israel Museum and the Jewish community of Barcelona. Private individuals were willing to lend, donate, or permit replicas from their priceless collection of artifacts and family heirlooms.

The Bonastruc ça Porta Centre has a lovely gift shop. Hebrew is taught, reemerging in Catalonia. Artists are invited to express their creativity by fashioning Jewish ritual objects, such as menorahs.

The Grandma contemplates the Catalan Atlas
Many families in Catalonia harbor a secret: They are descended from Jews.
 
Many of them still retain vestiges of the Jewish faith expressed as unique family customs. There is still a lot of fear to both discover one’s Judaism, and to express it.

Perhaps one day, Catalonians who wonder about their roots will wish to reach into the past with their DNA analysis. In the meantime, a scholarly place is a safe place to learn about Judaism. That is how the Bonastruc ça Porta Centre serves the native Catalonians.

Girona is on The Sephardic Way, a network whose aim is to locate, revive and recover the cultural heritage of Jewish which covers, at this time, Barcelona, Girona, Besalú, Córdoba, Cáceres, Jaén, Hervas, Ribadavia, Segovia, Toledo and Tudela.  Its object is to restore their synagogues and Jewish Quarters and create cultural centres and museums devoted to a deeper understanding of the Sephardic legacy.

More information: Patronat Call de Girona

During the Middle Ages, Girona was a very important Jewish centre with the best preserved and most important Jewish quarter in the Iberian Peninsula.

 
The Grandma in the Girona's Jewish Museum
At its heart is a new educational and cultural complex called the Bonastruc ça Porta Centre, which recreates Jewish life through art exhibits, musical events and food tastings. 

Surrounding a patio on the site of an ancient synagogue, there is a Catalan Museum of Jewish Culture, the Institute for Sephardic and Cabbalistic Studies and a library housing important medieval Jewish manuscripts. The Institute, which bears the name of the illustrious Girona-born Rabbi Mossé ben Nahan, or Nahmanides (Girona 1194-Acre 1270), was created in 1997 with the aim of rehabilitating, studying and promoting the history of Girona's Jewish community

The aims of the Institute are pursued through research and education. It is complemented by the library which allows free access and consultation to its specialized material.

More information: Time Out

The Institute operates in two main areas: education and promotion. Academic and scientific programmes, including international conferences, lecture cycles, courses on cultural or historical themes, seminars intended for different professional groupings, such as for those in education or tourism, Hebrew language classes, workshops and activities for families and for children of all ages. There is participation in activities organized by other entities and institutions so as to publicize the Jewish history and culture of the city of Girona.

Research and study projects are undertaken relating to Jewish Girona, the reconstruction of family trees and lineages, and the history of Jewish women. Information is processed into databases available to researchers and all interested in these subjects.

The main aim of the Museum is to preserve and reflect the history of the Jewish communities of Catalonia, which throughout the entire medieval period formed part of, and made a decisive contribution to, the history of the country and its cultural and scientific development. 

In most cases an attempt has been made to illustrate the explanations given during the visit to the Museum with examples of items originating from Girona's own Jewish history. These examples, which may be in documentary, archaeological or pictorial form, thus offer a general explanation of the pattern of Jewish life in medieval Catalonia.

The Museum has some thematic areas:









The Museum's eleven galleries thus form an itinerary allowing visitors to learn about aspects of the everyday life, culture and history of the Jewish communities of Catalonia and of Girona during medieval times.
  
RAHEL (11TH CENTURY)

Rahel was a Jewish woman who in 1040 sold in her own name a vineyard that she had inherited from her parents, situated outside the city walls near the abbey of Sant Daniel. She signed personally, in Hebrew, the deed for the sale of the land to Elies, a Christian. Since Rahel apparently knew how to read and write, a rare ability at the time, this enabled her to sign the deed of sale in her own hand. Most significant of all, however, is that Rahel acted on her own behalf and in her own name, and did not require male authorization to conduct a legal and legally recognized transaction concerning her own property. Hers is the oldest recorded signature in Hebrew in the city's history.

AZRIEL OF GIRONA (12TH CENTURY)
The Grandma tastes Kosher wine

A cabbalist and philosopher, he was a very well-known member of the cabbalistic circle of Girona, and was both a direct disciple of Isaac the Blind and the philosophical master of Mossé ben Nahman. Spoke several languages.


Noteworthy among his large number of writings is the Sa'ar ha-so'el, an intelligible explanation of the theory of the 10 Sefirot in the form of questions and answers following the rules of logic, intended as an initiation for beginners.

Other writings include Commentaries on the Sefer Yesirah or Book of Creation, on the Aggadot of the Talmud, and on the daily Liturgy. In the latter case it can be noted as a curiosity that the work includes numerous Catalan terms written in Hebrew characters.

MESSULLAM BEN SELOMOH DE PIERA (13TH CENTURY)

A cabbalist, poet and philosopher. Also known as Vides of Girona, he was a friend of Mossé ben Nahman and Azriel of Girona, and together with them was one of the leaders of the Jewish community in 13th century Girona. Formed part of the city's circle of cabbalists. He used poetry to express his philosophical ideas, and was against the philosophy of Maimonides. He wrote two poems dedicated to Mossé ben Nahman, whom he looked upon as a great sage and master.

MOSSÉ BEN NAHMAN (13TH CENTURY)

A philosopher, cabbalist, talmudist, poet, physician and rabbi, he is the most important and outstanding figure in the Judaism of the Iberian peninsula in the 13th century, and was the greatest talmudic authority of his generation. Known to his contemporaries as the Master of Girona or Ramban, he is referred to today as Nahmanides or as Bonastruc ça Porta.

He was born in Girona in 1194, and died in the Holy Land in 1270. He was the rabbi of Girona and the keenest intellect and spiritual leader of the whole of Catalan Judaism. He was the most illustrious and prestigious member of the city's cabbalistic circle

In 1263, summoned by King Jaume I, with whom he had ties of personal friendship, he defended Jewish beliefs against Pau Crestià, a Jewish convert to Christianity who was confessor to the King, in the so-called Disputation of Barcelona. Shortly afterwards he left voluntarily for Jerusalem so as to comply with the Talmudic precept to die at the mother's bosom. In 1270 in the city of Akko, he preached a New Year sermon which is still read in some synagogues all over the world even today.

Shortly before his death, he wrote a number of letters to his children in Girona, in which we can see how much he missed his family and the city. His personal seal in bronze was unearthed in the 1970s near Akko, and its inscription reads: Mossé, son of Rabbi Nahman, of Girona, have courage!. A copy of the seal can be seen in the Museum of the History of the Jews.

Among his works that are particularly outstanding for their exceptional quality are his Commentary on the Torah, the Torat ha-Adam, various Talmudic treatises, monographs about Jewish legal terms, and his poems, with their profound and cryptic content.

Jewish image in the Girona's Jewish Museum
ASTRUC, MOSSÉ AND JUCEF RAVAYA (13TH CENTURY)

Members of one of the most powerful Jewish families in the history of Girona, they each held high office in the royal and local administration in the late 13th century.

They had enormous influence both within the Jewish community and in the general administration of the kingdom. The father, Astruc Ravaya, was the King's Bailiff for Girona and district, having succeeded his son Jucef Ravaya in this post. His other son, Mossé Ravaya, was Bailiff-General of Catalonia, and as such signed the Royal Charter of Palamós in the name of the King in the late 13th century.

BONAFILLA (13TH CENTURY)

A member of the Ravaya family, one of the most important and powerful families in 13th century Jewish Girona. She was a businesswoman who negotiated sales and loaned money against the payment of interest, all in her own name and at her own risk. In April 1288, she was accused of fraud before the ecclesiastical courts by a Christian resident of La Bisbal. Judged by the Bishop of Girona, she had her sentence commuted after paying bail to the value of 260 sous in the coinage of Barcelona.

JACOB BEN DAVID BONJORN (14TH CENTURY)

A scientist and physician. The son of Ester Caravida and David Bonjorn de Barri. Court physician and astronomer to King Peter IV the Ceremonious, he calculated astronomical tables commissioned to him by the King in 1361. He lived in Girona and Perpinyà.

ESTER (14TH CENTURY)

The daughter of Astruc Caravida, a powerful Jew of illustrious lineage, and of Bonadona. Her parents arranged her marriage to David Bonjorn de Barri. During her marriage she lived in Perpinyà. Her husband was apparently a bad-tempered individual who treated her so badly that she repeatedly asked him for a divorce. The royal astronomer, however, refused to give her the necessary document of repudiation or to return her dowry. 


The Grandma in the Girona's Jewish Museum
In order to gain her freedom and recover her personal and family assets, Ester caused her husband's books and tools to disappear from his study. She thus provoked him to repudiate her, since only the husband could request and grant a divorce. She then returned to Girona and had to struggle for a long time more to recover her dowry, which the husband refused to return. For this reason she named a lawyer to represent her. It would seem that she finally succeeded in obtaining the full return of the assets that had been given as her dowry.

NISSIM BEN ROVEN GIRONDI (14TH CENTURY)

A Talmudist, physician, jurist and rabbi of the Jewish community of Saragossa in the 14th century. Originating from a family from Córdoba, he was born and trained in Girona, although he lived almost all his later life in Barcelona, where he was a spiritual master and leader and directed the Talmudic school created by the Grand Rabbi Shlomo ben Aderet, a disciple of Nahmanides. He was known for his rationalist opinions, contrary to the mystical currents of the Cabbala. He wrote a commentary on the Halakot of Yishaq al-Fasi, Sermons, and a very important work, Responsum, used as an instrument of consultation by numerous communities all over the world.

BLANCA (15TH CENTURY)

A Jewish woman who had converted to Christianity and was the widow of the convert Bernat Falcó, the Falcó family being one of the most powerful families in the Jewish and convert community in the Girona of the 14th and 15th centuries. Blanca made her will in 1437, before a Christian notary. Nothing in her will indicates her Jewish ancestry, and she shows herself as a devout Christian and a lady of the Girona middle class of her day. A reference, however, to her son David, who is Jewish, and to the inheritance that she leaves him in her will provide irrefutable proof of her own Jewish past. She was a woman who was rich and influential, and she divided her inheritance between her children: three sons, two of whom were converts and one who was a Jew, and two daughters, who were both converts and married to converts in Perpinyà and Castelló d'Empúries.



Our people represent a tapestry of interwoven identities embodying 
the rich diversity of what it means to be Jewish. 

Lynn Schusterman

Friday, 3 August 2018

BELGIAN BEER: UNESCO INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE

Some Belgian beers
The Grandma is a great fan of beer. When she is in Barcelona, she likes enjoying beer in the Moritz Factory, in the centre of the city.

Today, she has decided to travel to Brussel, the capital of Belgium to drink some beer with Claire Fontaine who is spending her summer holidays in the Flemish city

Belgian beers are recognized as the best beers around the world and they have been named as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO.

During the flight, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate  Language Practice manual.

More information: Making Comparisons I & II

Beer in Belgium varies from pale lager to amber ales, lambic beers, Flemish red ales, sour brown ales, strong ales and stouts. In 2016, there were approximately 224 active breweries in Belgium, including international companies, such as AB InBev, and traditional breweries including Trappist monasteries

On average, Belgians drink 84 litres of beer each year, down from around 200 each year in 1900. Most beers are bought or served in bottles, rather than cans, and almost every beer has its own branded, sometimes uniquely shaped, glass. 

The Belgian flag with beer
In 2016, UNESCO inscribed Belgian beer culture on their list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity.

Brewing in Belgium dates back at least the 12th century. Under the Catholic Church's permission, local French and Flemish abbeys brewed and distributed beer as a fund raising method.

The relatively low-alcohol beer of that time was preferred as a sanitary option to available drinking water. What are now traditional, artisanal brewing methods evolved, under abbey supervision, in the next seven centuries.

More information: UNESCO

The Trappist monasteries that now brew beer in Belgium were occupied in the late 18th century primarily by monks fleeing the French Revolution. However, the first Trappist brewery in Belgium, Westmalle, did not start operation until 10 December 1836, almost fifty years after the Revolution. That beer was exclusively for the monks and is described as dark and sweet. The first recorded sale of beer, a brown beer, was on 1 June 1861.

In the 16th and 17th century, a beer termed crabbelaer was the most popular beer in Ghent; at the peak of its popularity, more than 50 different breweries produced more than 6 million liters a year. Other kinds of beer brewed in Ghent were klein bier, dubbel bier, clauwaert, dubbele clauwaert and dusselaer.


In Belgium, four types of fermentation methods are used for the brewing of beer, which is unique in the world.

Claire, The Grandma & the Manneken Pis, Brussel
However for good understanding of labels of Belgian beer and reference works about Belgian beer often use different terms for the fermentation methods based on archaic or traditional jargon:

-Spontaneous fermentation with beers that are unique in Europe, Lambic and the derived Faro, Gueuze and Kriek beers.

-Warm fermentation is referred to as Top or High Fermentation for Trappist beers, white beers, ale, most other special beers.

-Mixed fermentation for the type old-brown beers.

-Cool fermentation is referred to as low fermentation for Lager or Pils.

More information: UNESCO

Belgian beers have a range of colours, brewing methods, and alcohol levels. Beers brewed in Trappist monasteries are termed Trappist beers. For a beer to qualify for Trappist certification, the brewery must be in a monastery, the monks must play a role in its production and the policies and the profits from the sale must be used to support the monastery or social programs outside. Only eleven monasteries currently meet these qualifications, six of which are in Belgium, two in the Netherlands, one in Austria, one in the United States, and one in Italy

The Trappist certification
Trappist beer is a controlled term of origin: it tells where the beers come from, it is not the name of a beer style. Beyond saying they are mostly warm fermented, Trappist beers have very little in common stylistically.

The designation abbey beers, Bières d'Abbaye or Abdijbier, originally applied to any monastic or monastic-style beer. After introduction of an official Trappist beer designation by the International Trappist Association in 1997, it came to mean products similar in style or presentation to monastic beers.

In 1999, the Union of Belgian Brewers introduced a Certified Belgian Abbey Beer, Erkend Belgisch Abdijbier, logo to indicate beers brewed under license to an existing or abandoned abbey, as opposed to other abbey-branded beers which the trade markets using other implied religious connections, such as a local saint. 

The requirements for registration under the logo include the monastery having control over certain aspects of the commercial operation, and a proportion of profits going to the abbey or to its designated charities. 

More information: Belgian Smaak

Monastic orders other than the Trappists can be and are included in this arrangement. The Abbey beer logo and quality label is no longer used for beers given the name of a fictitious abbey, a vaguely monastic branding or a saint name without mentioning a specific monastery. Some brewers may produce abbey-style beers such as dubbel or tripel, using such names but will refrain from using the term Abbey beer in their branding.

What connoisseurs now recognize as Trappist breweries began operations in 1838. Several monasteries, however, maintained working breweries for 500+ years before the French regime disrupted religious life (1795–1799). Even then, some Abbey beers such as Affligem Abbey, whose name now appears on beers made by the Heineken-owned Affligem Brewery, resumed brewing from working monasteries until the occupation of most of Belgium in World War I

The Grandma and the most selected Belgian beers
Commercial Abbey beers first appeared during Belgium's World War I recovery.

Although Abbey beers do not conform to rigid brewing styles, most tend to include the most recognizable and distinctive Trappist styles of brune, Belgian brown ale, aka dubbel, strong pale ale or tripel, and blonde ale or blond

Modern abbey breweries range from microbreweries to international giants, but at least one beer writer warns against assuming that closeness of connection with a real monastery confirms a product's quality.

Belgian special beers, stronger or bottled beers, are often served in elaborate branded beer glassware. Unless the bar is out of the specific glass that goes with that beer it is more often than not served in its own glass. Most bartenders or waitresses will apologize if the beer comes in a different glass.

More information: Beer of Belgium

One of the more common types is the tulip glass. A tulip glass not only helps trap the aroma, but also aids in maintaining large heads, creating a visual and olfactory sensation. The body is bulbous, but the top flares out to form a lip which helps head retention.

A vessel similar to a champagne flute is the preferred serving vessel for Belgian lambics and fruit beers. The narrow shape helps maintain carbonation, while providing a strong aromatic front. Flute glasses display the lively carbonation, sparkling colour, and soft lacing of this distinct style.

Chalices and goblets are large, stemmed, bowl-shaped glasses mainly associated with Trappist and Abbey ales. The distinction between goblet and chalice is typically in the glass thickness. Goblets tend to be more delicate and thin, while the chalice is heavy and thick walled. Some chalices are even etched on the bottom to nucleate a stream of bubbles for maintaining a nice head.

In addition to the profusion of glasses provided by brewers, some Belgian beer cafés serve beer in their own house glassware. 

More information: Belgium Beer Tourism


He was a wise man who invented beer.

Unknown

Thursday, 2 August 2018

ERRICO CARUSO: NEAPOLITAN LANGUAGE IN OPERA

Errico Caruso
Today, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Chapter 37). 

It's summer and there are some opera festivals near the beaches. The Grandma has decided to listen to some operas to remember that on a day like today, in 1921 Enrico Caruso, the greatest tenor who ever lived, died in Naples, the capital of the Campania.  

The Grandma loves opera and Errico Caruso is her favourite tenor. When she is in Naples, she likes staying at Excelsior Vittoria Hotel in Sorrento, the latest place where Errico Caruso was, in front of the Mediterranean Sea with some incredible seesights.

More information: Adjectives and Adverbs I, II & III

Errico Caruso (25 February 1873-2 August 1921) was an Neapolitan operatic tenor. He sang to great acclaim at the major opera houses of Europe and the Americas, appearing in a wide variety of roles from the Italian and French repertoires that ranged from the lyric to the dramatic.

Errico Caruso came from a poor but not destitute background. Born in Naples in the Via San Giovannello agli Ottocalli 7 on 25 February 1873, he was baptised the next day in the adjacent Church of San Giovanni e Paolo. Called Errico in accordance with the Neapolitan language, he would later adopt the formal Italian version of his given name, Enrico 

Errico Caruso
Caruso was the third of seven children and one of only three to survive infancy. 

Caruso's father, Marcellino, was a mechanic and foundry worker. Initially, Marcellino thought his son should adopt the same trade, and at the age of 11, the boy was apprenticed to a mechanical engineer who constructed public water fountains.

Whenever visiting Naples in future years, Caruso liked to point out a fountain that he had helped to install. Caruso later worked alongside his father at the Meuricoffre factory in Naples

At his mother's insistence, he also attended school for a time, receiving a basic education under the tutelage of a local priest. He learned to write in a handsome script and studied technical draftsmanship. During this period he sang in his church choir, and his voice showed enough promise for him to contemplate a possible career in music.

More information: Museo Enrico Caruso

Caruso was encouraged in his early musical ambitions by his mother, who died in 1888. To raise cash for his family, he found work as a street singer in Naples and performed at cafes and soirees. Aged 18, he used the fees he had earned by singing at an Italian resort to buy his first pair of new shoes. His progress as a paid entertainer was interrupted, however, by 45 days of compulsory military service. He completed this in 1894, resuming his voice lessons upon discharge from the army.

Errico Caruso in Il Pagliacci
On 15 March 1895 at the age of 22, Caruso made his professional stage debut at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples in the now-forgotten opera, L'Amico Francesco, by the amateur composer Mario Morelli

A string of further engagements in provincial opera houses followed, and he received instruction from the conductor and voice teacher Vincenzo Lombardi that improved his high notes and polished his style.

Money continued to be in short supply for the young Caruso. One of his first publicity photographs, taken on a visit to Sicily in 1896, depicts him wearing a bedspread draped like a toga since his sole dress shirt was away being laundered. 


At a notorious early performance in Naples, he was booed by a section of the audience because he failed to pay a claque to cheer for him. This incident hurt Caruso's pride. He never appeared again on stage in his native city, stating later that he would return only to eat spaghetti.

More information: Enrico Caruso

During the final few years of the 19th century, Caruso performed at a succession of theaters throughout Italy until in 1900 he was rewarded with a contract to sing at La Scala. His La Scala debut occurred on 26 December of that year in the part of Rodolfo in Giacomo Puccini's La bohème with Arturo Toscanini conducting. 

Audiences in Monte Carlo, Warsaw and Buenos Aires also heard Caruso sing during this pivotal phase of his career and, in 1899-1900, he appeared before the tsar and the Russian aristocracy at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg and the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow as part of a touring company of first-class Italian singers.

Errico Caruso in London, England
The first major operatic role that Caruso was given the responsibility of creating was Loris in Umberto Giordano's Fedora at the Teatro Lirico, Milan, on 17 November 1898. At that same theater on 6 November 1902, he created the role of Maurizio in Francesco Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur.

Caruso took part in a grand concert at La Scala in February 1901 that Toscanini organised to mark the recent death of Giuseppe Verdi. He embarked on his last series of La Scala performances in March 1902, creating along the way the principal tenor part in Germania by Alberto Franchetti.

More information: The Enrico Caruso Page

A month later, on 11 April, he was engaged by the Gramophone & Typewriter Company to make his first group of acoustic recordings in a Milan hotel room for a fee of 100 pounds sterling. These ten discs swiftly became best-sellers. 

Among other things, they helped spread 29-year-old Caruso's fame throughout the English-speaking world. The management of London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, signed him for a season of appearances in eight different operas ranging from Verdi's Aida to Mozart's Don Giovanni. His successful debut at Covent Garden occurred on 14 May 1902, as the Duke of Mantua in Verdi's Rigoletto. Covent Garden's highest-paid diva, the Australian soprano Nellie Melba, partnered him as Gilda. They would sing together often during the early 1900s. 

More information: Victoria and Albert Museum

In 1903, Caruso made his debut with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. The gap between his London and New York engagements had been filled by a series of performances in Italy, Portugal and South America.

Caruso purchased the Villa Bellosguardo, a palatial country house near Florence, in 1904. The villa became his retreat away from the pressures of the operatic stage and the grind of travel. Caruso's preferred address in New York City was a suite at Manhattan's Knickerbocker Hotel.

Errico Caruso in Sorrento, Naples
In addition to his regular New York engagements, Caruso gave recitals and operatic performances in a large number of cities across the United States and sang in Canada

He also continued to sing widely in Europe, appearing again at Covent Garden in 1904–07 and 1913–14, and undertaking a UK tour in 1909. Audiences in France, Belgium, Monaco, Austria, Hungary and Germany also heard him before the outbreak of World War I.

On 16 September 1920, Caruso concluded three days of recording sessions at Victor's Trinity Church studio in Camden, New Jersey. He recorded several discs including the Domine Deus and Crucifixus from the Petite messe solennelle by Rossini. These recordings were to be his last.

Caruso's health deteriorated further during the new year. He experienced episodes of intense pain because of the infection and underwent seven surgical procedures to drain fluid from his chest and lungs. He returned to Naples to recuperate from the most serious of the operations, during which part of a rib had been removed. While staying overnight in the Vesuvio Hotel in Naples, he took an alarming turn for the worse and was given morphine to help him sleep.

Caruso died at the hotel shortly after 9:00 a.m. local time, on 2 August 1921. He was 48. The King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III, opened the Royal Basilica of the Church of San Francesco di Paola for Caruso's funeral, which was attended by thousands of people. His embalmed body was preserved in a glass sarcophagus at Del Pianto Cemetery in Naples for mourners to view. In 1929, Dorothy Caruso had his remains sealed permanently in an ornate stone tomb.

More information: The New York Times


I know that I am a singer and an actor, 
yet in order to give the public 
the impression that I am neither one nor the other, 
but the real man conceived by the author, 
I have to feel and to think as the man the author had in mind.

Enrico Caruso

Wednesday, 1 August 2018

UK PARLIAMENT DECLARES 'SLAVERY ABOLITON ACT 1833'

Slavery Abolition Act, 1833
The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice book (Chapter 36). 


Yesterday, she was talking about Daniel Defoe and his masterpiece Robinson Crusoe. One of the most interesting things about this book is the character of Friday, Robinson's friend who represents slavery.

Slavery is any system in which principles of property law are applied to people, allowing individuals to own, buy and sell other individuals, as a de jure form of property. A slave is unable to withdraw unilaterally from such an arrangement and works without remuneration.

On a day like today in 1833,  the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 (3 & 4 Will. IV c. 73) abolished slavery throughout the British Empire.

This Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom expanded the jurisdiction of the Slave Trade Act 1807, making the purchase or ownership of slaves illegal within the British Empire, with the exception of the Territories in the Possession of the East India Company, Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, and Saint Helena. The Act was repealed in 1997 as a part of wider rationalisation of English statute law; however, later anti-slavery legislation remains in force.

In May 1772, Lord Mansfield's judgment in the Somersett's Case emancipated a slave in England, which helped launch the movement to abolish slavery.  

The case ruled that slavery was unsupported by law in England and no authority could be exercised on slaves entering English or Scottish soil.

Slavery in the British colonies
By 1783, an anti-slavery movement to abolish the slave trade throughout theEmpire had begun among the British public. 

In 1793 Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada John Graves Simcoe signed the Act Against Slavery. Passed by the local Legislative Assembly, it was the first legislation to outlaw the slave trade in a part of the British Empire.

In 1807, Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act of 1807, which outlawed the slave trade, but not slavery itself. Abolitionist Henry Brougham realized that trading would continue and as a new MP successfully introduced the Slave Trade Felony Act 1811 which at last made slave trading criminal throughout the empire.


More information: National Archives

The Royal Navy established the West Africa Squadron to suppress the Atlantic slave trade by patrolling the coast of West Africa. It did suppress the slave trade, but did not stop it entirely. Between 1808 and 1860, the West Africa Squadron captured 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans. They resettled many in Jamaica and the Bahamas.

Britain also used its influence to coerce other countries to agree treaties to end their slave trade and allow the Royal Navy to seize their slave ships.

Slavery Abolition Act 1833
In 1823, the Anti-Slavery Society was founded in London

Members included Joseph Sturge, Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce, Henry Brougham, Thomas Fowell Buxton, Elizabeth Heyrick, Mary Lloyd, Jane Smeal, Elizabeth Pease, and Anne Knight.

William Wilberforce had prior written in his diary in 1787 that his great purpose in life was to suppress the slave trade before waging a 20-year fight on the industry.

During the Christmas holiday of 1831, a large-scale slave revolt in Jamaica, known as the Baptist War, broke out. It was organised originally as a peaceful strike by the Baptist minister Samuel Sharpe. The rebellion was suppressed by the militia of the Jamaican plantocracy and the British garrison ten days later in early 1832. Because of the loss of property and life in the 1831 rebellion, the British Parliament held two inquiries. The results of these inquiries contributed greatly to the abolition of slavery with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.


More information: Regina Jeffers

The Act had its third reading in the House of Commons on 26 July 1833, three days before William Wilberforce died. It received the Royal Assent a month later, on 28 August, and came into force the following year, on 1 August 1834


In practical terms, only slaves below the age of six were freed in the colonies. Former slaves over the age of six were redesignated as apprentices, and their servitude was abolished in two stages: the first set of apprenticeships came to an end on 1 August 1838, while the final apprenticeships were scheduled to cease on 1 August 1840. The Act specifically excluded the Territories in the Possession of the East India Company, or to the Island of Ceylon, or to the Island of Saint Helena. The exceptions were eliminated in 1843.

Resistance to slavery in the Belize Settlement
The Act provided for compensation for slave-owners. The amount of money to be spent on the compensation claims was set at the Sum of Twenty Million Pounds Sterling

Under the terms of the Act, the British government raised £20 million to pay out in compensation for the loss of the slaves as business assets to the registered owners of the freed slaves. 

In 1833, £20 million amounted to 40% of the Treasury's annual income or approximately 5% of the British GDP. To finance the compensation, the British government had to take on a £15 million loan, finalised on 3 August 1835, with banker Nathan Mayer Rothschild and his brother-in-law Moses Montefiore. The money was not paid back until 2015.

Half of the money went to slave-owning families in the Caribbean and Africa, while the other half went to absentee owners living in Britain. The names listed in the returns for slave compensation show that ownership was spread over many hundreds of British families,  many of them of high social standing. 


More information: The Canadian Encyclopedia

The majority of men and women who were awarded compensation under the 1833 Abolition Act are listed in a Parliamentary Return, entitled Slavery Abolition Act, which is an account of all moneys awarded by the Commissioners of Slave Compensation in the Parliamentary Papers 1837-8 (215) vol. 48.

On 1 August 1834, an unarmed group of mainly elderly people being addressed by the Governor at Government House in Port of Spain, Trinidad, about the new laws, began chanting: Pas de six ans. Point de six ans, Not six years. No six years, drowning out the voice of the Governor. Peaceful protests continued until a resolution to abolish apprenticeship was passed and de facto freedom was achieved. Full emancipation for all was legally granted ahead of schedule on 1 August 1838.


Captives on board a slave ship, West Coast of Africa
As a notable exception to the rest of the British Empire, the Act did not extend to any of the Territories administered by the East India Company, including the islands of Ceylon, and Saint Helena

Slavery was criminalised in the Company territories via the Indian Slavery Act of 1843.

A successor organisation to the Anti-Slavery Society was formed in London in 1839, the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, which worked to outlaw slavery worldwide. The world's oldest international human rights organisation, it continues today as Anti-Slavery International.


More information: The Guardian

It is believed that after 1833 clandestine slave-trading continued within the British Empire; in 1854 Nathaniel Isaacs, owner of the island of Matakong off the coast of Sierra Leone was accused of slave-trading by the governor of Sierra Leone, Sir Arthur Kennedy. Papers relating to the charges were lost when the Forerunner was wrecked off Madeira in October 1854. In the absence of the papers, the English courts refused to proceed with the prosecution.

In Australia, blackbirding and the holding of indigenous workers' pay in trust continued, in some instances into the 1970s.

Modern slavery, both in the form of human trafficking and people imprisoned for forced or compulsory labour, continues to this day.

The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 was repealed in its entirety by the Statute Law Repeals Act 1998. The repeal has not made slavery legal again, with sections of the Slave Trade Act 1824, Slave Trade Act 1843 and Slave Trade Act 1873 continuing in force. In its place the Human Rights Act 1998 incorporates into British Law Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights which prohibits the holding of persons as slaves.




The real names of our people were destroyed during slavery. 
The last name of my forefathers was taken from them 
when they were brought to America and made slaves, 
and then the name of the slave master was given, which we refuse, 
we reject that name today and refuse it. 
I never acknowledge it whatsoever.

Malcolm X