Vizzer and MM, you cheered up my afternoon.

I watched the first episode, really magnificent...I can be wrong but I guess that I once saw the episode with the first trains...
I will give it a go...but even in these troubled times busy with a lot of things as organizing works for the appartements for hire...

MM, thank you for mentioning Fantasia (this first one in my humble opinion was much better than the second one). In the time and still when watching the film again, it find it one of my all time favourites ( I saw a documentary about the man Walt Disney and how this film was made...and the costs, nearly bringing Disney on the edge of bankruptcy. I appreciated it very much and as I saw it I found it better than an opera a perfect blend between the song, the images and the story.

Unbelievable how it is possible that already in 1940 those Creationists were already that powerful and still today...even in the Netherlands nowadays and of course from the USA...you don't believe it...
https://www.icr.org/article/creationism-netherlands/
...the question is always statistics and how many adepts in % of the population...
BTW MM, where do you find all these anecdotes...

MM, your second youtube is rather pessimistic...that Bolero, great music, but the video so really depressing at the end...
In that way is Vizzer's series at the end in the last episode much more hopeful...
Gil (Green George) has to watch this.



Watch from the 24th minute...
PS and I am proud that also the Belgian TV is present in the supporting channels. And both channels the Dutch language and the French language one

Kind regards to both, Paul.

I have to be honest the quality of the clips here is not that great and they are very short but I came across a compendium of the dancer Nijinsky in some of his well-known roles.  The clip from The Rite of Spring is at about 6:49.  I watched a version of the full ballet online during lockdown (that version seems to have been removed now) and was surprised to learn that some members of the audience became irate during the first performance.  Obviously the full ballet was a copy of a more modern performance.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

some members of the audience became irate during the first performance.

By all accounts the cacophony at that Paris premiere in 1913 was as a result of those who disliked Nijinsky's interpretation and those who appreciated it trying to drown each other out. The upshot of all the noise was that the undecided majority in the audience were prevented from judging for themsleves for being unable to hear the orchestra or the dancers. So they expressed their annoyance only adding to the din. Appropriately the premiere of Le Sacre du printemps took place in the springtime of that year. Meanwhile back in Russia, premieres of ballets often took place in the wintertime with the 14th of December (old style) being a popular date. The 14th of December (old style) equates with the 26th of December (new style) - i.e. St Stephen's Day.

In the English-speaking world, 'the feast of Stephen' has traditionally been linked to the story of Good King Wenceslas, although this 'tradition' only dates back to the carol's Victorian author John Mason Neale and its publication in 1853. Previously both the story and the tune linked St. Wenceslas with the Spring and Easter. And there were, indeed, many at the time who disliked Neale's 'imposition'. Shades of Nijinsky 60 years later perhaps.

That said - and despite Neale's licence - I've always liked the carol Good King Wenceslas. It's one of my favourites. Yet the Wenceslas in question wasn't even a king. He was a duke who lived in the 10th Century and as 'Wenceslas I of Bohemia' he is often confused with another Wenceslas I of Bohemia who was indeed a king and lived 200 years later. They also both died in the month of September which just adds to the confusion. Here's footage from 90 years ago of the procession in Prague in which the saint's relic (his skull) is displayed:



(The parade takes place on the 28th of September, the anniversary of his martyrdom.)

Vizzer, at the end as said to nordmann I can now watch your youtube entering via "explorer" instead of "chrome". I will try once with the "adds" that nordmann suggested on "chrome" to see if it is still "banned".

Kind regards from Paul.

Seeing as today is American Independence Day, here's some old footage of the 4th July parade of American troops as they march through Paris in 1918.

After nearly four years of bitter warfare during which they had already lost well over a million men, the French were understandably very pleased to finally see US troops coming to their aid. The first US troops had arrived in France in June 1917 but it would be eleven months before the first few American units saw any action at all (and then in only a rather minor way under British and Australian command). The first major operation involving US troops (again attached to an Australian battalion) was at the Battle of Hamel (northern France close to the Belgian border) which was fought on the 4th of July - the very same day that the majority of the American forces were parading through Paris - and even then their involvement was despite last-minute orders from American headquarters that its troops should not take part in offensive operations led by non-US generals. And of course the war would all be over on the western front in just another four months. Nevertheless in the brief period between when this footage was taken and the Armistice on 11 November, the Americans would lose close to 60,000 men.

En France aujourd'hui c'est la Fête Nationale, la quatorze Juillet, Bastille Day - and so here are a few historic Bastille Day Parades to get everyone in the appropriate mood.

First up is that of 1939 on the eve of WW2, hence why the contingents of British forces were so prominent. Also noteworthy are all the French colonial troops, provided you can ignore the rather racist references to "dark-skinned tribesmen from Senegal and Madagascar, and slant-eyed Indo-Chinese". Alongside the Sultan of Morocco the other person specifically mentioned as a guest of honour of the French President (Albert Lebrun in 1939 and destined to be the last President of the Third Republic) was Leslie Hore-Belisha, who was then Britain's Secretary of State for War under Chamberlain's government.



At 3:50 the narrator says, "Just twenty years ago today in 1919 this army staged its victory march through the Arc de Triomphe ... ", and here is that parade. The Bastille Day Parade of 1919 doubled as the Allies' Victory Parade after WW1 and hence the prominence of troops from America, Britain and the Commonwealth, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, and all the other allied countries (although I assume no Russian contingent, or was there?). I could easily pick out Maréchaux Joffre, Foch et Pétain, I think I could identify General Pershing, and I'm sure many other famous people must have been there (but notably wasn't General Haig absent, being then C-in-C Home Forces in Great Britain, as a violent General Strike seemed imminent?) although in truth all those bushy mustaches do rather all look alike and so it's hard to tell a Clemenceau from a Lloyd-George.



Finally here's the very modest and rather muted (literally) Bastille Day commemoration held on 14 July 1940 - just twelve months after the grand parade featured in the first youtube clip - and no longer in Paris but in London. There's no sound nor original narrative that I can find, but in the clip General De Gaulle and Admiral Muselier rally the forces of Les Frances Libres and invoke l'esprit of the Great War by laying wreaths at the Cenotaph and on the memorial to Marshal Foch in Whitehall.



And now I'm off to watch the TV coverage of this year's parade.

With King Charles III's state visit to Germany currently in the news, I thought this might be of interest: it's footage of the last time a reigning British king visited Berlin, 110 years ago, and note that's as a reigning king rather than an abdicated one, nor a queen: Elizabeth II during her reign visited Berlin several times, the first being a state visit in 1965.

Anyway back to 1913: the occasion is the marriage of Kaiser Wilhelm's daughter, Victoria Luise, to Ernest Augustus the Duke of Brunswick on 24 May. It was one of the last great social events of European royalty before World War I with most of the crowned heads of Europe in attendance, including Wilhelm's cousin George V (who was the bride's great uncle, as well as being more distantly related to the groom). However unlike King Charles' current visit to Germany that of George V in 1913 was considered by the British government to be a strictly "private" rather than a "state" visit because of the worsening relations between the two countries: they would be at war just 14 months later. Hence probably also why there is so little actual footage of King George as he was just another wedding guest.

This first clip is very rare footage in original colour produced by an experimental system - it's not the result of modern colourisation techniques although I expect it has been "cleaned up" and enhanced a bit. The original system, as I understand it, used three separate cameras closely positioned next to each other and mechanically synchronised. Each camera, by the use of colour filters, recorded film in a separate colour: red, yellow, blue, which were then chemically treated on development to give varying tones of that single colour on the individual camera's film. All three films were then physically laminated together to give a composite multi-colour result. At least I think that's how it was done.



This is more regular black-and-white footage of the event.



And this very short clip is of George V himself in Berlin during the wedding festivities,

During today's coverage of the Charles III's first Trooping of the Colour, it was mentioned that this was the first time since 1986 that the monarch had ridden a horse in the parade and the first time a king had attended on horseback since 1947 when George VI led the first parade since the war (in 1948, '49 and '50 George attended the procession in a carriage and witnessed the parade from the saluting base, while in 1951 his declining health meant that he did not attend and the salute was taken by princess Elizabeth, soon to be queen).



George VI's first Trooping the Colour had been that of June 1937 following the abdication of his brother Edward VIII just 6 months earlier in December 1936. Since Edward VIII was only on the throne for a year and was never crowned, one tends to forget that he was nevertheless the rightful king from the moment of Geoge V's death on 20 January 1936. Accordingly in June 1936 the Trooping of the Colour was held in honour of the King Edward VIII. Like today's ceremonial for Charles III, that in 1936 was the King's first birthday parade, albeit for Edward VIII it would also be his last.



Apart from there being fewer troops on parade today; some changes in the uniforms (khaki and no bearskins in the austerity of 1947 and it seems the pre-war guards' uniform had prominent white shoulder straps and cartridge pouches); plus of course the old Lee-Enfield rifles are now replaced by modern SA80s; there really is very little difference in the whole ceremony. Indeed going back still further (that of 1928 is the earliest I can find recorded on film) today's parade was almost exactly the same as here under George V.