Back like Moriarity, byotches. Winterreise passed with close-flung travel, like in Venice, where we danced by moonlight on a superyacht (FYI Onassis' Christina O had barstools covered in 'an ultrasoft pelt, made from the foreskin of minke whales'), skied glaciers in Kitzbühel and nipped four-course champagne breakfasts in Cortina.
Our menswear appetite was sated on Men's Fashion Week Milan runways, which played to Made in Italy strengths (and Pina Bausch as muse to Miuccia Prada) -- lustrous textiles, meticulous craftsmanship and tailoring savoire-faire -- like we wrote about in a recent cover story feature on Gildo Zegna for Swiss Style magazine. For backstory, we wrote about the recent Milan Fashion Week rehaul here.
We checked out the Museo del Risorgimento exhibition 'Verdi Architetto', photographs by conductor Francesco Maria Colombo of Verdi's old haunts (below) -- Villa Verdi Sant’Agata, Villanova sull’Arda and his tomb at la Casa di Riposo per Musicisti on display through March.
Palazzo Morando hosted 'VENI VIDI VERDI. La donna è mobile', a (sophomoric -- sorry!) play on Verdi's Rigoletto aria through installations and *meh* mash-ups, Verdi prints layered over the museum's permanent collections (below).
We slid into nostalgia with the la Fenice Concerto di Capodanno -- Carmen Giannattasio and Lawrence Brownlee dueling Verdi medley, the former peacocking three, lush wardrobe changes merit to Italian fashion designer Antonio Rivas, complete with matching fascinators (Hershey's Kisses version below).
The Wiener Philharmoniker New Year's Concert set couture against custom, ballerinas in Vivienne Westwood. At the traditional Radtzky March, spirited Barenboim snatched brass from one of the Wieners.
Back in Milan, we sipped Callas Crustas at the Grand Hotel et de Milan -- brandy, cointreau, maraschino, lemon and bitters.
We found a twee mini-lego violin at Milan's +century old music store, Mitarotonda.
We lolled at Justin Bieber's new tat:
And we fell in love again with the interwebz for sweet dreams made like these:
In Cinque Terre between mountain hikes, we regretted not buying this Turandot DVD performed by the Levanto young'uns academy, as advertised at a local bar.
And not eating in this restaurant...
Or buying this hotplate with Claudio Abbado from the Teatro alla Scala shop:
January sweeps on...