Waking to find himself shipwrecked on a strange shore before a dark wood, the pilgrim of the Divine Comedy realizes he must set his sights higher and guide his ship to a radically different port. Starting on the sand of that very shore with Dante, John Freccero begins retracing the famous voyage recounted by the poet nearly 700 years ago. Freccero follows pilgrim and poet through the Comedy and then beyond, inviting readers both uninitiated and accomplished to join him in navigating this complex medieval masterpiece and its influence on later literature. Perfectly impenetrable in its poetry and unabashedly ambitious in its content, the Divine Comedy is the cosmos collapsed on itself, heavy with dense matter and impossible to expand. Yet Dante's great triumph is seen in the tiny, subtle fragments that make up the seamless whole, pieces that the poet painstakingly sewed together to form a work that insinuates itself into the reader and inspires the work of the next author. Freccero magnifies the most infinitesimal elements of that intricate construction to identify self-similar parts, revealing the full breadth of the great poem. Using this same technique, Freccero then turns to later giants of literature- Petrarch, Machiavelli, Donne, Joyce, and Svevo-demonstrating how these authors absorbed these smallest parts and reproduced Dante in their own work. In the process, he confronts questions of faith, friendship, gender, politics, poetry, and sexuality, so that traveling with Freccero, the reader will both cross unknown territory and reimagine familiar faces, swimming always in Dante's wake.

Waking to find himself shipwrecked on a strange shore before a dark wood, the pilgrim of the Divine Comedy realizes he must set his sights higher and guide his ship to a radically different port. Starting on the sand of that very shore with Dante, John Freccero begins retracing the famous voyage recounted by the poet nearly 700 years ago. Freccero follows pilgrim and poet through the Comedy and then beyond, inviting readers both uninitiated and accomplished to join him in navigating this complex medieval masterpiece and its influence on later literature. Perfectly impenetrable in its poetry and unabashedly ambitious in its content, the Divine Comedy is the cosmos collapsed on itself, heavy with dense matter and impossible to expand. Yet Dante's great triumph is seen in the tiny, subtle fragments that make up the seamless whole, pieces that the poet painstakingly sewed together to form a work that insinuates itself into the reader and inspires the work of the next author. Freccero magnifies the most infinitesimal elements of that intricate construction to identify self-similar parts, revealing the full breadth of the great poem. Using this same technique, Freccero then turns to later giants of literature- Petrarch, Machiavelli, Donne, Joyce, and Svevo-demonstrating how these authors absorbed these smallest parts and reproduced Dante in their own work. In the process, he confronts questions of faith, friendship, gender, politics, poetry, and sexuality, so that traveling with Freccero, the reader will both cross unknown territory and reimagine familiar faces, swimming always in Dante's wake.

Collection of operas composed by Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini. Carlo Rizzi conducts the Wiener Symphoniker for a performance of 'Aida' featuring Tatiana Serjan in the title role, Iano Tamar as Amneris, Rubens Pelizzari as Radamès and Iain Paterson as Amonasro. 'Madama Butterfly' stars Raffaella Angeletti, Annunziata Vestri and Massimiliano Pisapia with the score performed by the Fondazione Orchestra Regionale delle Marche and conducted by Daniele Callegari. Maria Guleghina plays the role of the eponymous character in 'Turandot' with Zubin Mehta leading the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana. 'La Traviata' features Svetla Vassileva, Massimo Giordano and Vladimir Stoyanov. Yuri Temirkanov conducts the Orchestra e Coro del Teatro Regio di Parma. Finally, Massimo Zanetti conducts a production of 'Rigoletto' which stars Leo Nucci in the lead role with Francesco Demuro as the Duke of Mantua and Nino Machaidze as Gilda.

The Bolognese nun Diodata Malvasia was presumed to have authored only one work, The Arrival and the Miraculous Workings of the Glorious Image of the Virgin (1617). In her recently discovered second manuscript chronicle, A Brief Discourse on What Occurred to the Most Reverend Sisters of the Joined Convents of San Mattia and San Luca (1575), her writing demonstrates active resistance to Tridentine convent reform. Together, Malvasia's works read as the bookends to a lifelong crusade on behalf of her convent.

Collection of operas composed by Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini. Carlo Rizzi conducts the Wiener Symphoniker for a performance of 'Aida' featuring Tatiana Serjan in the title role, Iano Tamar as Amneris, Rubens Pelizzari as Radamès and Iain Paterson as Amonasro. 'Madama Butterfly' stars Raffaella Angeletti, Annunziata Vestri and Massimiliano Pisapia with the score performed by the Fondazione Orchestra Regionale delle Marche and conducted by Daniele Callegari. Maria Guleghina plays the role of the eponymous character in 'Turandot' with Zubin Mehta leading the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana. 'La Traviata' features Svetla Vassileva, Massimo Giordano and Vladimir Stoyanov. Yuri Temirkanov conducts the Orchestra e Coro del Teatro Regio di Parma. Finally, Massimo Zanetti conducts a production of 'Rigoletto' which stars Leo Nucci in the lead role with Francesco Demuro as the Duke of Mantua and Nino Machaidze as Gilda.