#*handel's hallelujah playing*

[knightofleo]

[srigraingertempura]

Absolutely obsessed

THE HORNS

The way that the conductor made the sopranos hold their top A for longer just to make a nice rit I know the sopranos were screaming and crying

[bisxualbucky]

finallyyyyyy got some weed today. i'm about to be so much more bearable. at least to myself lmaooo. i apologize in advance to the rest of y'all if i start late night posting while high 🫡

[artistsonthelam]

How cool is this! Just chased an orchestra playing Baroque music atop a boat floating up and down the Chicago River right in the heart of the city. (To top it all off I ate a Chicago style hot dog on the Riverwalk before the festivities.) Music of the Baroque: The Chicago Water Music, performing Handel’s Water Music, the “Hallelujah” Chorus of Handel’s Messiah, and the Opening Chorus of Vivaldi’s Gloria. Chicago is the best. 🩵 Here’s a short clip I took on one of their stops; longer, 9-minute video (including different locales along the River, different lighting, and different music) here.

[Edit: Thank you for retweeting me, Do312, and thank you for resharing my post, Music of the Baroque!]

// (c) Jenny Lam 2024

[sevarix-blogs]

oh btw when i was visiting my bro we went and saw handel's messiah performed live. like the entire thing. it was really interesting! i very rarely see baroque era stuff performed live, so it was cool seeing like. a harpsichord and stuff. the harpsichordist was incredible. he didn't even have sheet music!!! he was just over there jammin on his harpsichord playing continuo the entire 2.5 hours. and the soloists were really good too. the lyrics were a bit repetitive LOL. in the program they had the libretto and it was interesting seeing how many times they repeated each line. sometimes it was like. ok are they gonna move on to the next line. or are they gonna sing 'he was despised and rejected' for the 50th time. (fr that one was like 10 minutes long).

anyway the hallelujah chorus was fun ofc. when they got to that part the conductor had everyone stand and sing along. the chorus was incredible. my favorite parts were when the choir sung.

anyway it was a cool experience! the symphony in my bro's city had two other concerts that looked really great but i don't think i convinced my bro to go see them LOL. anyway i should go to the symphony again soon in my own city....

[nikarie5]

Resurrection - drabble

Rating: General audience. Someone singing in the shower. Hymns. French. Description: Logan Tremblay is not the only one who messes around with song lyrics. Set around the time of part xxi in Sweater Weather by @lumosinlove. Thanks to @lumosinlove, @hazelnoot-analyst, @noots-fic-fests, and @1-800-shedevil (line divider)

Finn O'Hara grabbed the body wash bottle, spun around on his heel, brought the container up to his mouth, and started belting, "Res-sur-rection TIME! Come on!" A deeper, false-baritone voice comes out of the guest bedroom, "It's a resurrection." "Yahoo!", yelled two voices in near perfect unison and harmony. In the kitchen, Leo looks over at Logan with a look of shock. "Alex est ici? Depuis quand?" Logan replies, "Hier soir. C'était presque minuit. Il n'a pas voulu resté à l'hôtel avec Haley et Ramsey."

Head canon that Finn randomly singing bits of church songs or playing with lyrics is so normal that Leo doesn't even bat an eye at that, he just thought he would have heard Alex come in. All of the O'Hara's are lovely, but none of them are what you could call quiet.

Y'see, Alex and Finn would get packed off to their church youth group as kids to expend any extra energy, and also sang in the choir until they left for college. Alex sang in the choir at university each year when the hockey season had ended. The youth group songs being catchy as heck, the greatest hits would inevitably get air time when Finn and Alex were together. Their rendition of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus would bring you to tears. On the other hand, OKN was a bad influence on Finn, and the first time he came home and sang Res-erection-time in the shower over Thanksgiving break, he had to clean up all of the coffee Haley spat out over the breakfast island. Logan helped.

[mariacallous]

Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s longest-reigning post-World War II leader, wanted nothing more than for people to love him. Whether he was on the global stage or the stage of the cruise ship where he first worked as a singer, the former Italian prime minister, who died Monday at 86, was always working the crowd in a desperate search for approval.

Though Berlusconi officially left politics in a black limousine in November 2011—delivering his resignation to Italian President Giorgio Napolitano in Rome’s Quirinale Palace—he remained highly influential as a political powerbroker until his death.

It was a confidence vote over tax fraud allegations that forced his departure from office. After resigning, the former statesman sat slumped in the back of his dark limo as his driver slalomed through unfriendly crowds that lined the route to his tony villa, the Piazza Venezia. Spectators popped champagne corks in his direction, threw coins, and spat at his car yelling profanities and calling him a mafioso and a thief. A small ensemble played the “Hallelujah” chorus from George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah.” It was a spectacle only Italians could pull off with such flair.

Another government collapse meant little in Italy, but there was something spectacular about Berlusconi’s fall from grace. The “Teflon Don,” as he had been known before finally being ousted, was tarnished by a sex scandal in 2010 involving then-17-year-old dancer Karima El Mahroug, whose stage name was “Ruby Rubacuori” (Ruby Heartbreaker). Berlusconi had sprung her from a Milan police station after she called one of his assistants, who was aware that Ruby knew a lot more than most young women in Berlusconi’s lewd circle. The Ruby scandal started with Berlusconi’s office calling the Milan police station to say the young woman in question was Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak’s granddaughter, which she was not. What she was, though, was a regular fixture in the “Bunga Bunga” parties the prime minister, also known as “Il Cavaliere” (The Knight), held in the basement of his Villa Arcore near Milan.

Women who participated in the soirees during nights of lap dancing for Berlusconi cronies—including strippers costumed as nuns, popes, and former U.S. President Barack Obama—told the courts during many investigations into Berlusconi that they were handed envelopes with cash and little gold necklaces with butterflies on them as payment at the end of each party.

By this time, Berlusconi had already been accused of what in most countries would be full-blown sex scandals but which are in Italy, for reasons not entirely clear, often empowering. Ruby was somehow different, however, not least because she was under the age of 18. The age of consent in Italy is 16, but the age of legal prostitution is 18, and she was—in the eyes of the law—prostituting herself to Berlusconi and his cronies. His defense was that she misled him about her age.

Berlusconi apparently learned the name “Bunga Bunga” from the late Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi, who often pitched his Bedouin tents in some of Rome’s most lavish gardens on state visits and who was himself accused of abducting underage girls and holding them captive as sex slaves. The two leaders had an unusually close relationship, which led to Berlusconi signing a treaty in 2008 that funneled $5 billion to the North African nation to compensate for Italy’s colonization. In return, Qaddafi stopped the flow of African migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea from Libya, while warning he could again “turn on the spigot and turn Europe black.” Berlusconi’s face even graced Libyan passports in the years before Qaddafi was killed during Libya’s civil war.

Berlusconi’s legacy ebbed and flowed as those he chose to embrace rose or fell into disgrace. He was considered U.S. President George W. Bush’s “second-best European friend” and stood up for U.S. President Bill Clinton when he was found to have had a sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. But it was his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin that would prove his most difficult and most damaging.

The two men made headlines when an escort wrote in her 2008 tell-all book that she had sex with Berlusconi in his Rome residence on a four-poster bed he referred to as “Putin’s bed.” The white bed, which she described as “having curtains at the top,” was almost certainly a wink-wink gift from one self-considered stud to another. In exchange, Berlusconi gave Putin a comforter cover featuring a real photo of the two men shaking hands and smiling ear-to-ear.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, it took Berlusconi more than a month to condemn the friend with whom he often shared his holiday homes in Sardinia, spawning an enclave for Russian oligarchs. Shortly after the war began, he told reporters that he thought “Europe must make a peace proposal, trying to get the Ukrainians to accept Putin’s demands.” He finally admitted his old friend Vlad was wrong, saying he was “disappointed and saddened” by his actions.

Not unlike former U.S. President Donald Trump—another “Teflon Don” to whom Berlusconi hated being compared—Berlusconi was the first Italian prime minister to lead the country without ever having served as an elected official. Though the two men shared similar styles, Berlusconi was a highly educated man whose grasp on geopolitics was impressive.

During an interview that former Newsweek foreign editor Christopher Dickey and I did with Berlusconi at his palatial Roman abode, he was flanked by aides and assistants he could have called on to answer any question. Instead, he spoke knowledgeably about Middle Eastern politics, named leaders from far-flung countries, provided insights on U.S. political debates, and gave us a read on nearly every country in Europe—how their leaders were faring and what the biggest geopolitical issues were at the time—all while his aides were left to chew idly on their croissants.

Berlusconi was born to a bank employee and a housewife in 1936. He would spend years taking his mother Rosa with him to meet world leaders, and she was often at his side at state dinners. She died in 2008. His sister Maria Francesca Antonietta died a year after their mother, and his brother and sometimes business partner Paolo is often in the sights of financial police.

One of his first jobs was as a vacuum salesman, and he moonlighted as a cruise ship singer throughout the 1960s. Later in life, between political successes, he wrote songs and published albums of Neapolitan ballads that are still widely played across Italy.

He graduated with honors from law school in 1961 and married his first wife, Carla Elvira Dall’Oglio, in 1965. Though they would divorce, she is perhaps the only woman who never told the tabloids anything about their relationship. She was maintained financially throughout her life, given a monthly alimony payment that has never been made public but which was apparently enough to keep her from succumbing to the barrage of media requests asking her to talk about her ex. The children he had with her, Marina and Pier Silvio, played crucial roles in his extensive media and real estate investments.

In the 1980s, Berlusconi married his second wife, Veronica Lario, with whom he fell in love (by his own account, during his interview with me and Dickey) when she performed topless at a dance in Milan. He went on to have three children with her (Barbara in 1984, Eleonora in 1986, and Luigi in 1988). They divorced amid spectacular scandal in 2009, when she announced in an op-ed for a left-leaning newspaper that she was leaving him because he “consorts with minors.” He was ordered to pay her an annual alimony of $48 million to maintain the lifestyle he had created for her. By then, Berlusconi was a billionaire many times over.

Berlusconi started his real estate business with a housing development for young professionals in Milan’s smartest suburb, aiming to create a posh enclave for a lifestyle-driven clientele. The money for his initial investment remained of questionable origin until his death, with many prosecutors unsuccessfully trying to prove it was driven by the mafia.

He went on to build a media empire off his real estate profits and was the first to introduce American-style sitcoms to Italian audiences through his first television networks, including Telemilano, which he launched in 1974, and Canale 5, which he started in 1980. He created what is now Italy’s largest commercial broadcaster, Mediaset, importing American programs including “General Hospital” and “Dallas,” with which he was obsessed. But he also introduced rampant sexism with programs featuring scantily-clad women pandering to older men—the women rarely spoke beyond introducing commercial breaks or replying that they didn’t know the answer to a question to open up a segment—a style of TV that persists today and which is blamed in part for the country’s strong patriarchal grip on society.

He continued to invest substantial profits in real estate, publishing, commercial stores, and the AC Milan soccer club, which he runs under the umbrella group Fininvest. That group includes more than 150 businesses and has been the target of perhaps as many investigations, trials, and fines for creative bookkeeping.

Seizing on Italy’s obsession with sports, Berlusconi launched his own political party in 1994 called “Forza Italia” (Forward Italy), the cry Italian fans yell at the World Cup and national competitions. He went on to serve three times as prime minister: from May 1994 to January 1995, from June 2001 to May 2006, and from May 2008 to November 2011.

His tenure was peppered by tax fraud accusations, sex scandals, whispers of mafia involvement, and gaffes. He was convicted of bribery, tax evasion, and having sex with an underage call girl—convictions that mostly were overturned during Italy’s generous appellate process. At least twice, his eventual acquittals were the result of his own government changing the laws. In 2014, he served community service for a tax fraud conviction the previous year.

Berlusconi frequently said he had done more for women than anyone else in Italy, including appointing a former topless Perilli calendar model as his minister of equal opportunity. But as much of the rest of the world moved to equalize salaries and combat blatant sexism, Italy remains demonstrably far behind most developed countries. Italy consistently scores low in the World Economic Forum’s annual gender report, with fewer women managers and decision makers than other European countries and extremely low paternity leave benefits, suggesting women are the main caretakers for children.

Berlusconi suffered several health issues, including heart problems that kept him in and out of the hospital—this often happened when he had a trial date for one of his many cases on appeal—and he suffered serious COVID-19 symptoms early in the pandemic. He also suffered multiple lacerations and a fractured nose when someone threw a souvenir statue of the Milan Duomo at him in 2009 as he signed autographs at a campaign rally. In April 2023, he was diagnosed with leukemia.

Yet he remained a powerful figure until the end, even winning a seat in the Italian Senate in 2022. But he will likely be remembered most for his gaffes and scandals, including when he famously called German Chancellor Angela Merkel “unfuckable” on a hot mic and publicly called Obama’s Black skin a “tan.”

Some of his adoring followers called for a state funeral long before he died. His foes blamed him for Italy’s ruinous economic state and hard-to-deny struggle with following rules. For many, it might be tempting to think of him as a pathetic joke, but he was far too wealthy and powerful for that.

[eiremauve]

On the terrible arguments for Tony's ending

Anyone who does not hate Tony's ending has at best contempt for Tony or fools and you can tell by the arguments used. "It's full circle!" means "I think repeating a line automatically makes thing full circle for some reason." "He's Christ" means either "Not enough to be resurrected like Christ though because he is not in fact Christ" or "Handel's Hallelujah chorus is about Christ's crucifixion right?" "He's Uncle Ben" means "This main character and hero was not really a main character and hero but a side character and mentor figure to be fridged so a real main character and hero can angst." "It is redemptive" means "He has been such a terrible person he doesn't deserve a happy ending." "It made him into a hero/it is shocking that he would be sacrificial" means "I have ignored all of his heroism and sacrifice plays throughout the series." Honestly Discourse would be better if people simply said they did not care when they do not and actually thought arguments through before making them. Every argument I've heard makes me more convinced I am right.

[grogusmum]

Halloo! (Not the anon btw) just wanted to say I loved reading about your holiday traditions, especially the Christmas morning music signal. My Dad always played the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah to wake us up. Once in a while, he'll still call me on Christmas morning and blare it through the cell phone 💚 thank you for sharing.

How fun!!!

I mom played Bing Crosby.

But your story reminded me of my sister and my tradition of playing the Beatles song "Birthday" over the phone or voice mail on our birthdays.

[dougielombax]

Alright.

Behold my anti-sex music playlist!

For music that just won’t work when you’re planning on doing it.

Not saying any of these songs are bad. Just that they won’t be good for sex.

In my mind…

Here they are:

1. Chumbawumba - Tubthumping.

2. Blarf - Banana

3. Eric Andre & the Last Seed - Beef Patty

4. Midge Ure - The Man Who Sold the World (OH NO. NOT ME)

5. The Serbian National Anthem! (Bože pravde) - by I Don’t Fucking Know. (Yes I’m serious)

6.Geometry Dash theme tune

7. My Country ‘Tis of Thee (Boston Pops version)

8. Peaches - Fuck the Pain Away

9. That FUCKING Pina Colada song!

10. Aerosmith - I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing

11. Otis Redding - Shake

12. The Trashmen - Surfin’ Bird

13. Liberty Bell March - John Philip Sousa

14. That weird boingy Delaware version of the Dr Who theme what was only used once in the Australian broadcast of Carnival of Monsters.

15. Swans - She Loves Us

16. The Platters - My Prayer (for any David Lynch fans, if you know, YOU KNOW!)

17. Grieg - In the Hall of the Mountajn King (it HAS to be the Portsmouth sinfonia version)

18. Georg Friedrich Handel - Hallelujah Chorus from Messiah (also the Portsmouth Sinfonia version, ideal for maximum awkwardness)

19. 1800 Pain - Hurt

20. Weezer - Buddy Holly

21. ANYTHING by Nickelback (especially Photograph (LOOK AT THIS FUCKEN’ SHIT!) or Rockstar)

22. The Cure - Friday I’m in Love

23. Nine Inch Nails - Mr Self Destruct (only an animal could fuck to this!)

24. Hanggai - Drinking song (this is actually a fucking banger but still)

25. Jamie Christopherson - The Stains of Time (except every single lyric is AND IT WILL COME)

26. Babylon Zoo - Spaceman

27. Suede - Filmstar

28. Bonnie Tyler - Total Eclipse of the Heart (on full blast)

29. Ligeti - Lux Aeterna (may induce existential crises)

30. Korngold - Theme from King’s Row

31. AJCW - Wonderland (very loud, this is some cosmic horror shit)

32. Girl Talk - Play Your Part (Pt 1.)

33. Akira Yamaoka - Black Fairy

34. Ludvig Forssell -204863

35. Bach - Chorale BWV 645 (slow instrumental organ/trombone version)

36. Akira Yamaoka - My Heaven

37. Kikagaku Moyo - Dripping Sun (the beat drop at the end is some next level shit)

38. Carpenter Brut - Le Perv

39. Dawn of the Dead - The Gonk

40. de Wolfe music - Lubricator

41. Wizzard - I Wish it could be Christmas Every Day

42. Venetian Snares - All the Children are Dead

43. Van McCoy - Do the Hustle

44. Roy Orbison - In Dreams (look, it’s a great tune, but still).

45. Smash Mouth - Walking on the Sun

46. Mansion Basement - Resident Evil Director’s Cut Soundtrack

47. Happy Days (as in the main theme tune from Happy Days!)

48. Exhumed - As Hammer to Anvil

49. Muddy Magnolias - American Woman (David Lynch Remix) (if you fuck to this then you are legally not a human, you are a CREATURE)

50. Sonny Terry - Old Lost John

51. Hanatarash - My Dad is Car (VERY LOUD!)

52. Clubbed to Death (instrumental)

53. Jerry Manolas - Midnight Dream

54. Guided by Voices - Game of Pricks

55. Ludvig Forssell - Death Stranding theme tune

56. Glenn Miller - In the Mood

57. Venetian Snares - Winnipeg is Fucking Over

58. BJ Thomas - Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head.

59. Limp Bizkit - Break Stuff

60. Huun Huur Tu - Eerbek Aksy

61. Whitney Houston - I'm Your Baby Tonight

62. Mussorgsky - The Great Gate of Kiev

63. Low Roar - Give Up

64. Ludwig Van Beethoven - Rage Over a Lost Penny

65. Neon Indian - Slumlord’s Release

66. The Caretaker - All You are Going to want to Do is Get Back There.

67. Horace Heidt - This Time It’s Real (instrumental - slowed down)

68. BluntedBeatz - I Am

69. Eddie Vedder - Out of Sand

70. Olga Wojciechowska - Remember When the Light Came (unfortunately I can’t find it ANYWHERE!)

71. Blarf - The Me in Me

72. Chuck Person - Lightning Strikes

73. Polkas y Huapangos - Los Dos Laredos. (Pretty sure you legally CANNOT fuck to this)

74. Tom Jones - What’s New Pussycat (VERY LOUDLY)

75. Merzbow - Ultramarine Blue

76. Fool’s Garden - Lemon Tree (I NEED Wes Anderson to use this song in his next film! FIND A WAY to get him to do it!)

77. Big Brother Theme Tune

78. Fanfare Vagabontu - Batuta Din Moldova

79. Lvovsky - Now the Powers of Heaven

80. Tuvan Ensemble - Arbyn Ossun

81. Weird Al - EBay song

82. Marathon 2 main theme (I mean come ON!)

83. Electric Light Orchestra - Mr Blue Sky (SHUT UP!!!!)

84. My Chemical Romance- Famous Last Words

85. Van Halen - Panama

86. Powermad - Slaughterhouse

87. Bjork - It’s Oh so Quiet

88. Sigur Rós - Hoppípolla

89. Richard Strauss - Zueignung (specifically the version performed by Jessye Norman (RIP))

90. Apollo 100 - Joy (especially if you speed it up)

91. Carol Anne McGowan - Sycamore Trees (look it’s beautiful but you cannot fuck to it!)

92. Brian Eno - Weightless

93. Jean Sibelius - Symphony no 2.

94. Handel - Hallelujah Chorus (as performed by the Portsmouth Sinfonia)

95. The White Buffalo - I Know You (it’s a great piece of music but it’s really depressing)

96. Rednex - Cotton Eye Joe

97. Men Without Hats - The Safety Dance

98. Blink 182 - I Miss You. (WHERE ARE YEEEEEEEW)

99. Francis Stanfield - O Sacred Heart. (Yes I know it’s a Catholic hymn! That’s the point!)

100. Surasshu - The Penis (Eek!)

101. Non Phixion - The CIA is Trying to Kill Me

102. All-American Rejects - Move Along (SHUT UP! It’s a good song but come on)

103. Big Data - Bombs Over Brooklyn (their curiosity for learning has skyrocketed)

104. Adam & the Ants - Stand and Deliver

105. Animal Collective - Derek

106. Ludwig Van Beethoven. Symphony no. 5. Movement 1.

107. Hong Kong 97 Soundtrack - I Love Beijing Tiananmen.

108. Mr Bean animated series theme tune (piano, obviously).

109. John Williams - The Immolation Scene. (From the Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith soundtrack)

110. Ludwig Van Beethoven. Again. - Ode to Joy. Symphony no 9. Movement 4.

111. Vague003 - Tonight

112. Tchaikovsky - Serenade for Strings in C Major Op. 48.

113. Old Gods of Asgard - Take Control

114. Zbigniew Preisner - Lacrimosa, Day of Tears

115. AJCW - Fog Horm

[xtruss]

Obituary: The Scandalous Life and Career of Silvio Berlusconi

The Former Italian Leader Loved Topless Women and Vladimir Putin but Hated Being Compared to Donald Trump.

— June 12, 2023 | By Barbie Latza Nadeau | Foreign Policy

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi arrives for a news conference at the Chigi Palace in Rome on May 26, 2010. Alberto Pizzou/AFP Via Getty Images

Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s longest-reigning post-World War II leader, wanted nothing more than for people to love him. Whether he was on the global stage or the stage of the cruise ship where he first worked as a singer, the former Italian prime minister, who died Monday at 86, was always working the crowd in a desperate search for approval.

Though Berlusconi officially left politics in a black limousine in November 2011—delivering his resignation to Italian President Giorgio Napolitano in Rome’s Quirinale Palace—he remained highly influential as a political powerbroker until his death.

It was a confidence vote over tax fraud allegations that forced his departure from office. After resigning, the former statesman sat slumped in the back of his dark limo as his driver slalomed through unfriendly crowds that lined the route to his tony villa, the Piazza Venezia. Spectators popped champagne corks in his direction, threw coins, and spat at his car yelling profanities and calling him a mafioso and a thief. A small ensemble played the “Hallelujah” chorus from George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah.” It was a spectacle only Italians could pull off with such flair.

Berlusconi mingles with supporters during a rally for his Forza Italia party in Rome on Feb. 6, 1994. Franco Origlia/Getty Images

Another government collapse meant little in Italy, but there was something spectacular about Berlusconi’s fall from grace. The “Teflon Don,” as he had been known before finally being ousted, was tarnished by a sex scandal in 2010 involving then-17-year-old dancer Karima El Mahroug, whose stage name was “Ruby Rubacuori” (Ruby Heartbreaker). Berlusconi had sprung her from a Milan police station after she called one of his assistants, who was aware that Ruby knew a lot more than most young women in Berlusconi’s lewd circle. The Ruby scandal started with Berlusconi’s office calling the Milan police station to say the young woman in question was Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak’s granddaughter, which she was not. What she was, though, was a regular fixture in the “Bunga Bunga” parties the prime minister, also known as “Il Cavaliere” (The Knight), held in the basement of his Villa Arcore near Milan.

Women who participated in the soirees during nights of lap dancing for Berlusconi cronies—including strippers costumed as nuns, popes, and former U.S. President Barack Obama—told the courts during many investigations into Berlusconi that they were handed envelopes with cash and little gold necklaces with butterflies on them as payment at the end of each party.

By this time, Berlusconi had already been accused of what in most countries would be full-blown sex scandals but which are in Italy, for reasons not entirely clear, often empowering. Ruby was somehow different, however, not least because she was under the age of 18. The age of consent in Italy is 16, but the age of legal prostitution is 18, and she was—in the eyes of the law—prostituting herself to Berlusconi and his cronies. His defense was that she misled him about her age.

Berlusconi apparently learned the name “Bunga Bunga” from the late Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi, who often pitched his Bedouin tents in some of Rome’s most lavish gardens on state visits and who was himself accused of abducting underage girls and holding them captive as sex slaves. The two leaders had an unusually close relationship, which led to Berlusconi signing a treaty in 2008 that funneled $5 billion to the North African nation to compensate for Italy’s colonization. In return, Qaddafi stopped the flow of African migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea from Libya, while warning he could again “turn on the spigot and turn Europe black.” Berlusconi’s face even graced Libyan passports in the years before Qaddafi was killed during Libya’s civil war.

Then-Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Berlusconi confer during a news conference at Villa Gernetto in Lesmo, Italy, on April 26, 2010. Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images

Berlusconi’s legacy ebbed and flowed as those he chose to embrace rose or fell into disgrace. He was considered U.S. President George W. Bush’s “second-best European friend” and stood up for U.S. President Bill Clinton when he was found to have had a sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. But it was his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin that would prove his most difficult and most damaging.

The two men made headlines when an escort wrote in her 2008 tell-all book that she had sex with Berlusconi in his Rome residence on a four-poster bed he referred to as “Putin’s bed.” The white bed, which she described as “having curtains at the top,” was almost certainly a wink-wink gift from one self-considered stud to another. In exchange, Berlusconi gave Putin a comforter cover featuring a real photo of the two men shaking hands and smiling ear-to-ear.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, it took Berlusconi more than a month to condemn the friend with whom he often shared his holiday homes in Sardinia, spawning an enclave for Russian oligarchs. Shortly after the war began, he told reporters that he thought “Europe must make a peace proposal, trying to get the Ukrainians to accept Putin’s demands.” He finally admitted his old friend Vlad was wrong, saying he was “disappointed and saddened” by his actions.

Not unlike former U.S. President Donald Trump—another “Teflon Don” to whom Berlusconi hated being compared—Berlusconi was the first Italian prime minister to lead the country without ever having served as an elected official. Though the two men shared similar styles, Berlusconi was a highly educated man whose grasp on geopolitics was impressive.

During an interview that former Newsweek foreign editor Christopher Dickey and I did with Berlusconi at his palatial Roman abode, he was flanked by aides and assistants he could have called on to answer any question. Instead, he spoke knowledgeably about Middle Eastern politics, named leaders from far-flung countries, provided insights on U.S. political debates, and gave us a read on nearly every country in Europe—how their leaders were faring and what the biggest geopolitical issues were at the time—all while his aides were left to chew idly on their croissants.

A young Berlusconi with his children (from left) Barbara, Luigi, and Eleonora in his villa near Milan circa 1994. Franco Origlia/Getty Images

Berlusconi was born to a bank employee and a housewife in 1936. He would spend years taking his mother Rosa with him to meet world leaders, and she was often at his side at state dinners. She died in 2008. His sister Maria Francesca Antonietta died a year after their mother, and his brother and sometimes business partner Paolo is often in the sights of financial police.

One of his first jobs was as a vacuum salesman, and he moonlighted as a cruise ship singer throughout the 1960s. Later in life, between political successes, he wrote songs and published albums of Neapolitan ballads that are still widely played across Italy.

He graduated with honors from law school in 1961 and married his first wife, Carla Elvira Dall’Oglio, in 1965. Though they would divorce, she is perhaps the only woman who never told the tabloids anything about their relationship. She was maintained financially throughout her life, given a monthly alimony payment that has never been made public but which was apparently enough to keep her from succumbing to the barrage of media requests asking her to talk about her ex. The children he had with her, Marina and Pier Silvio, played crucial roles in his extensive media and real estate investments.

In the 1980s, Berlusconi married his second wife, Veronica Lario, with whom he fell in love (by his own account, during his interview with me and Dickey) when she performed topless at a dance in Milan. He went on to have three children with her (Barbara in 1984, Eleonora in 1986, and Luigi in 1988). They divorced amid spectacular scandal in 2009, when she announced in an op-ed for a left-leaning newspaper that she was leaving him because he “consorts with minors.” He was ordered to pay her an annual alimony of $48 million to maintain the lifestyle he had created for her. By then, Berlusconi was a billionaire many times over.

Berlusconi at the beach in Hammamet, Tunisia, in August 1984. Umberto Cicconi/Getty Images

Berlusconi started his real estate business with a housing development for young professionals in Milan’s smartest suburb, aiming to create a posh enclave for a lifestyle-driven clientele. The money for his initial investment remained of questionable origin until his death, with many prosecutors unsuccessfully trying to prove it was driven by the mafia.

He went on to build a media empire off his real estate profits and was the first to introduce American-style sitcoms to Italian audiences through his first television networks, including Telemilano, which he launched in 1974, and Canale 5, which he started in 1980. He created what is now Italy’s largest commercial broadcaster, Mediaset, importing American programs including “General Hospital” and “Dallas,” with which he was obsessed. But he also introduced rampant sexism with programs featuring scantily-clad women pandering to older men—the women rarely spoke beyond introducing commercial breaks or replying that they didn’t know the answer to a question to open up a segment—a style of TV that persists today and which is blamed in part for the country’s strong patriarchal grip on society.

He continued to invest substantial profits in real estate, publishing, commercial stores, and the AC Milan soccer club, which he runs under the umbrella group Fininvest. That group includes more than 150 businesses and has been the target of perhaps as many investigations, trials, and fines for creative bookkeeping.

Seizing on Italy’s obsession with sports, Berlusconi launched his own political party in 1994 called “Forza Italia” (Forward Italy), the cry Italian fans yell at the World Cup and national competitions. He went on to serve three times as prime minister: from May 1994 to January 1995, from June 2001 to May 2006, and from May 2008 to November 2011.

His tenure was peppered by tax fraud accusations, sex scandals, whispers of mafia involvement, and gaffes. He was convicted of bribery, tax evasion, and having sex with an underage call girl—convictions that mostly were overturned during Italy’s generous appellate process. At least twice, his eventual acquittals were the result of his own government changing the laws. In 2014, he served community service for a tax fraud conviction the previous year.

Berlusconi takes off his face mask to address the media as he leaves San Raffaele Hospital in Milan on Sept. 14, 2020, after being hospitalized for COVID-19. Piero Cruciatti/AFP Via Getty Images

Berlusconi frequently said he had done more for women than anyone else in Italy, including appointing a former topless Perilli calendar model as his minister of equal opportunity. But as much of the rest of the world moved to equalize salaries and combat blatant sexism, Italy remains demonstrably far behind most developed countries. Italy consistently scores low in the World Economic Forum’s annual gender report, with fewer women managers and decision makers than other European countries and extremely low paternity leave benefits, suggesting women are the main caretakers for children.

Berlusconi suffered several health issues, including heart problems that kept him in and out of the hospital—this often happened when he had a trial date for one of his many cases on appeal—and he suffered serious COVID-19 symptoms early in the pandemic. He also suffered multiple lacerations and a fractured nose when someone threw a souvenir statue of the Milan Duomo at him in 2009 as he signed autographs at a campaign rally. In April 2023, he was diagnosed with leukemia.

Yet he remained a powerful figure until the end, even winning a seat in the Italian Senate in 2022. But he will likely be remembered most for his gaffes and scandals, including when he famously called German Chancellor Angela Merkel “unfuckable” on a hot mic and publicly called Obama’s Black skin a “tan.”

Some of his adoring followers called for a state funeral long before he died. His foes blamed him for Italy’s ruinous economic state and hard-to-deny struggle with following rules. For many, it might be tempting to think of him as a pathetic joke, but he was far too wealthy and powerful for that.

Correction, June 12, 2023: A previous version of this article misstated Berlusconi’s comparative time in office.

— Barbie Latza Nadeau is an American Journalist who has lived in Rome, Italy, since 1996. She is the author, most recently, of The Godmother: Murder, Vengeance, and the Bloody Struggle of Mafia Women.

[wearethekat]

as anyone who's read Alexis Hall's Something Spectacular would know, this is a queer novel which namedrops a lot of Baroque music. as someone with a Lot of Thoughts about music (albeit with no claim to expertise), here's the compiled results of the frantic youtube searching I did to find out which pieces he was referring to. Plus bonus commentary on the likelihood of the piece sending someone into raptures. May this be a help to anyone mixing up Artaxerxes (Arne), Artaserse (Vinci), and Serse (Handel).

(Yes, all three of these works do appear in the book, a curse on baroque composers and their recycled libretti)

Sonata no. 1 Book 1 in F For Piano Four Hands: II: Allegro (Burney)

Quote: "'Oh no.' Peggy elbowed Sir Horley urgently. 'I haven't heard Sonata no. 1 Book 1 in F for Piano Four Hands: I. How will I understand the plot?'" (45)

Commentary: I thought Alexis Hall had made this one up when reading the book. That's too much title, put some back. This one is actually legitimately tiresome*, 2/10. Highly unlikely to send someone into raptures.

Mozart's Flute Concerto no. 1 in G major

Quote: "only to be replaced by a long-nosed gentleman who subjected them to the full thirty minutes" (47)

Commentary: Cmon, this is Mozart, Peggy! please don't disrespect his divine name. 6/10. I could see how it would fail to send someone who doesn't like music into raptures, especially if we account for the fact it was apparently performed sans orchestra and possibly by an amateur performer.

Artaxerxes, "Still Silence Reigns Around" (Arne)

Quote: "As her clear, crystalline voice filled the room, Peggy wondered if anyone else was sensible of the irony of a two to three hour piece of musical theater opening with the line 'Still silence reigns around.' It was all she could do to prevent herself from muttering 'We should be so lucky' under her breath." (48)

Commentary: I was extremely skeptical that any concert would subject people to straight recitative, a convention designed to jam as much plot as inhumanely possible into thirty seconds of half-sung Italian. But no, Alexis Hall says this piece was so overplayed at the time that Jane Austen complained about it in a letter, and I believe him. 1/10. It takes a very good composer to make this stuff rapturous and this is not it.

"Come Fill, Fill, My Good Fellow" (Beethoven)

Quote: "the name of which reduced Sir Horley to a fit of giggles that had to be stifled in Peggy's handkerchief" (48)

Commentary: okay now this one was definitely put in just to make the obvious joke, but it's actually quite a fun drinking song, 6/10.

Cello Concerto in A Major (CPE Bach) (probably)

Quote: "the CPE Bach concerto he played sounded like someone sobbing under their bedclothes in the dark, but it spoke to her present mood." (48)

Commentary: Now THIS is more like it. Surely this would touch the heart of even the most hardened music hater, if only briefly. 7.5/10.

Serse, "Ombra mai fu" (Handel)

Quote: "There were no vocal tricks, no embellishments, or flourishes: just the performer's voice merciless in its power and perfection like nothing Peggy had ever heard before." (51)

Commentary: Okay, yeah, that would do it. I'm skeptical that this would make someone faint OR give them a spontaneous orgasm (especially since it's already been established that their hearts are hardened to the glories of Mozart), but it's a gorgeous piece. 9/10. Almost makes you want to forgive Handel for writing that wretched Hallelujah Chorus.

Artaserse, "Vo solcando un mar crud" (Vinci)

Quote: "Orfeo's voice rose and fell like the waves in a storm, gathering power and breaking afresh" (125)

Commentary: This is so extremely tiresome and unlovely. In fact it was so bad I had to double-check that the author actually meant this opera and not the five other Artaserses, but no. This is it. 0/10, bad even for the excesses of Baroque music, there's no way that an accredited Music Hater would enjoy this, no matter how hot they found the singer. If you want to hear what really good Baroque opera sounds like, try Joyce Didonato** chewing the furniture in this fantastic performance of "Pensieri, voi mi tormentate" (Handel again).

Germanico in Germanium, "Parto ti lascio, o cara" (Porpora)

Quote: "They surged through a dizzying series of rapid trills and flourishes, half-desperate, half-furious, the melody almost stumbling to keep up with them." (259)

Commentary: Perfectly passable if not precisely to my taste (<- baroque music disliker). I could see it having an effect if you already thought the singer was hot, 7/10.

Also mentioned: Minuetto (Boccherini)

*in my personal opinion as number 1 piano disliker

** for those of you who are musically uninclined, she's also singing a role which would be conventionally described as an "evil MILF" while dressed in black lingerie.

[hacash]

hey Alexa, play Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus

[sutrala]

HALLE, DUCHY OF MADEBURG — A band of rowdy concert-goers took to heckling Baroque master George Frederich Handel and his orchestra at the group's reunion tour over the weekend.

[fiddler-sticks]

Mom's smoking mad that we volunteered to host the family (belated) Christmas at our house, and now everyone's trying to take over and do stuff that she thought wouldn't happen because it's at our house. The only reason she said we'd host it is so that maybe all the party games and schmaltzy stuff that she hates wouldn't happen because it's on our turf, but now my aunt has suggested that someone music for the Hallelujah Chorus and whoever has instruments can play it and the rest can sing. Mom's infuriated for two reasons. One, she just doesn't want to have planned activities and just wants to sit around the fire and eat and talk and be cozy. And two, the Hallelujah Chorus isn't even a Christmas song!! It fits Easter better, but it's just something at the end of Handel's Messiah, and not a Christmas song, and she hates it so much when people think it is, and now her own family of accomplished musicians thinks it's a Christmas piece. She's saying now that no one can make her do anything she doesn't want to in her own home, but I know she'll give in to her mom and sister's peer pressure and do it. My brother and I are planning on hiding in his or my room, even though I play violin and they're gonna want me. Oh well, they're just gonna have to settle for my little cousin who also plays instead of me, because I'm not gonna let my grandma pressure me into anything anymore. I'm fed up with her. Like, being closer to Mom's side of the family was one of the few downsides of moving up here. Welp, my New Year's Day is going to be something, that's for sure...

[memoriesoftwoworlds]

Stanford sing along play along Handel’s Messiah. First after the pandemic.

This is my first ever sing along Messiah and I enjoyed so much. Two ladies behind us seem professional sopranos and I enjoyed so much listening to them.

Our lives are at the hand of God: the wonderful chancellor, the mighty God, the everlasting father, and the prince of peace! Hallelujah!

Ezekiel 5:11-17.