Death at La Fenice

Advantages: Excellent well scripted story
Disadvantages: Slow investigation

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CPTDANIELS 28.06.2008 · Read review
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Review of Death at La Fenice - Donna Leon

LITTLE GEM HOTEL IN VENICE CALLED LA FENICE

Advantages: location location
Disadvantages: the staff

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heididog 24.08.2009 · Read review
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Review of Hotel La Fenice Et Des Artistes, Venice

Expensive and not very nice

Advantages: very well located
Disadvantages: fucking expensive

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Hitchcock 30.05.2001 · Read review
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Review of Dikker & Thijs Fenice Hotel, Amsterdam

A Venetian Murder Mystery

Advantages: Interesting setting, charming central character, entertaining
Disadvantages: Series may quickly become repetitive

...like a drugs related death. Before long, Brunetti has opened up a complex web of intrigue, one with its heart in big business and maybe even the government... "Death in a Strange Country" is the second of Donna Leon's novels set in Venice and centred on the charming Guido Brunetti. The novels had been recommended by a fellow amateur reviewer but I was unable to get my hands on "Death at la Fenice" the first novel as quickly as I wanted so I opened this one right away. It's really not necessary - at least it appears that way from this book - to read the books in sequence. Certainly this book did not make any references to its predecessor that were obvious to me. The reader learns a little about Brunetti and his family and I suspect that over the next books some of this will be repeated; maybe four or five books in I will find this...

fizzytom 06.09.2007 · Read review
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Review of Death in a Strange Country - Donna Leon

Acqua Alta

Advantages: Well written, exciting novel
Disadvantages: No epilogue

...of his from the murder case 'La Fenice' a few years before and is keen to help her and understand why anyone should try and hurt her. His course is helped by the Vice Questore Patta insisting he takes charge of the investigation as Lynch is a friend of the Mayor. Upon investigation Brunetti finds the men who visited her were warning her not to attend a meeting with the Museum's owner Dottor Semenzato. All the injured party can tell him is that the men had a Southern Italian accent possibly Sicilian. But no sooner had he began his investigation when Semenzato is killed in his office. Brunetti is confused, why warn Miss Lynch not to see him and then kill the man? Lynch is recovering well in hospital and explains about the exhibition she recently organised of Ceramic Pottery from China. And her shock at when the exhibits return to their...

CPTDANIELS 09.08.2008 · Read review
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Review of Acqua Alta - Donna Leon

A visual guide to a visual city

Advantages: Beautifully presented, wonderful photographs give a brilliant introduction to all that Venice has to offer, lots of informartion
Disadvantages: Large, heavy, difficult to carry, layout means it is sometimes difficult to extract information

...The Insight / Discovery Channel guide to Venice is an extremely comprehensive guide to the city: it includes a section detailing Venice's history, notes about the Venetian people themselves, 13 features covering aspects of the city's life and culture, ranging from Venetian cuisine to La Fenice Opera house to the Venice of Giacomo Casanova. The main body of the book is a visitor's guide to the sights and the guide finishes with a comprehensive Travel Tips section packed with essential contact addresses and numbers. The book also includes 14 maps and hundreds of photographs. I bought this guide in preparation for spending three months in Venice last autumn and found it very useful for getting an idea of Venetian culture and life. The guide is extremely readable and I read much of it before actually setting off for Venice. One...

Leni_84 28.06.2005 (01.07.2005) · Read review
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Review of Insight Guide Venice - Insight Guide

A fiasco. Time will judge.

Advantages: Superb singing
Disadvantages: Hard to find

...When Verdi's immortal opera La Traviata premiered in March 1853 at the Fenice, Venice, it proved a disaster. Verdi was philosophical about the outcome. "Was it the singers' fault, or mine"? he wrote to his friend Emanuele Muzio. Perhaps there was good reason for the audience to pan the performance. Firstly, they objected to the modern costuming - the play on which the opera was based took place some 150 years earlier - but the costumes were contemporary. Then later, in Act 111, when Violetta was dying of consumption and was given merely a few hours to live, the audience erupted into an outburst of laughter. This was due to the fact that opening night prima donna, Signora Salvini-Donatelli, who was rather kindly referred to as 'troppo properosa' - or significantly overweight - did little to add real credibility to the tragedy...

falstaff88 01.01.2005 · Read review
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Review of Verdi: Traviata (La)

La Serenissima

Advantages: Beautiful, unique
Disadvantages: a bit smelly in the summer, tourists

...time! There are so many things to see, I can't list them all and certainly no better than a good guide book would! The traghettos, when they are running (they are the gondolas which cross the Grand Canal between the bridges) are worth a ride, it costs only 800L (about 20p) most people stand up while they are crossing and they are quite fun, just remember to pay because noone will explicitly ask you, and you are just expected to know how much they are.. there are no signs up! The vaporettos (water buses) are more expensive and personally, I prefer walking, and just one final hint, before I write too much.. go and see La Fenice.. the opera house which burnt down in 1994 (Or sometime round then). It is desperately sad to see it in ruins, although it is being rebuilt, but it is also fascinating to see the little corners of burnt...

womble 11.11.2001 · Read review
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Review of Venice (Italy)

Time for a change

Advantages: "No time like the present?...."
Disadvantages: "....There's no time but the present." (Ben Reich)

...the meantime. There's no point." "All right, let's forget about the future, for now at least. The past. Any ideas? Any preferences?" "Not too long ago. And not anywhere primitive. No Stone Ages, or Darkest Africa or anything like that. I'd want things to be clean, safe and civilised." "What about Elizabethan London?" I suggested. "We could see Shakespeare's plays on their first nights." "Probably infested with fleas. Or worse. And the acoustics at the new replica Globe are terrible, so they must have been just as bad in the original. I'm sure theatres have improved no end since then, and the plays are just the same, aren't they?" "How about Venice, in that case? The Teatro La Fenice in the heyday of the Serenissima? The carnival in full swing and Galuppi at the clavichord." "The stench! Think what the Grand Canal smells like...

torr 30.06.2003 (14.04.2009) · Read review
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Review of If you had a Time Machine where would you go?

The Interpreter of Things

Advantages: A valuable book for everyone who loves to read various topics in culture, literature and philosophy
Disadvantages: None

...of those who see the world inhabited by symbols or symptoms. Like someone who, for example, points to the little box of matches, stares hard into your eyes, and says, 'You see there are seven?,' then give you a meaningful look, waiting for you perceive the meaning concealed in that unmistakable sign; or like the inhabitant of a symbolic universe, when every object and every event translates into sign something hyper-Uranian that everyone already knows but wants only to see reconfirmed." Chapter VII: DE INTERPRETATIONE This chapter is a very short review of Umberto Eco on Antonioni's documentary Chung Kuo at La Fenice. Antonioni (1912-2007) was an Italian modernist film director. His films are widely considered some of the most influential in film aesthetics. Chapter VIII: A THEORY OF EXPOSITIONS In the last chapter of the book...

cs.hari 09.11.2007 (19.11.2007) · Read review
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Review of Travels Into Hyper-Reality - Umberto Eco