When Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) was commissioned to compose a new opera in 1884, his choice of story fell on Edgar, a tragedy inspired by La coupe et les lèvres by Alfred de Musset. The librettist Ferdinando Fontana took some liberties,

Flailing and falling, so Icarus descends from the skies, having melted his wings in the heat of the sun. In this landscape, we see life going on and then, in the bottom right corner of the work, the legs of

Alfred de Musset published his first collection of poems, Contes d’Espagne et d’Italie (Tales of Spain and Italy) in 1829. He strongly believed that the inspiration of the poet was intricately connected to personal emotions. Poetry was highly personal and

Pieter Bruegel’s enormous painting Children’s Games is 118 x 161cm (46” x 63”) and throws us into the middle of a complicated street scene. Over 200 children play over 80 different games and we approach it with our modern eyes

Music is, to many people, very abstract. It is the only form of art that is a language of its own, and oftentimes it is difficult for the common listener to understand the true message of the composer without a

On the basis of his sentimental and declamatory verse, Alfred de Musset has not been well judged by mid-twentieth-century criticism. Yet, Musset is perhaps the first French poet since the Renaissance to make humor a vehicle for impulses essentially lyrical.

Aaron Douglas (1899-1979), was a leading painter in the Harlem Renaissance. In 1934, he created a 4-panel mural for the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library. This branch later became NYPL’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black

Arthur Rimbaud was highly critical of Alfred de Musset’s work. In his “Letters of a Seer” he wrote, “Musset did not accomplish anything because he closed his eyes before the visions.” Just exactly what visions Rimbaud had in mind we