opera Archives - Page 2 of 3 - Bone and Sickle

The Plague Doctor Unmasked

April 1, 2020 boneandsickle Black Death, Carnival, death, EPISODE, folklore, history, horror, Italy, medicine, opera, plague, Venice

The figure of the masked plague doctor is an object of intense fascination but also the subject of much misinformation.[…]

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#32 Vampires, Shroud-Eaters, and the White Plague

September 4, 2019 boneandsickle Bram Stoker, classical music, Edgar Allen Poe, EPISODE, folklore, gothic literature, literature, Mercy Brown, Nachzehrer, New England Vampires, opera, plague, Romanticism, shroud-eaters, tuberculosis, undead, vampires

This episode explores the connection between vampires and disease, beginning in 19th-century New England with a strange graveyard ritual involving[…]

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#22 The Devil’s Due: Musicians and Marksmen

March 14, 2019 boneandsickle black magic, classical music, EPISODE, Faust, folklore, Freischütz, Germanic, Germany, Gothic, gothic literature, history, horror, legends, literature, magic, movies, opera, Romanticism

In this episode we look at legends of musicians and marksmen said to have made Faustian deals with the Devil.[…]

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