Don Giovanni has finally been revived [24, 28, and 30 April], played complete, and very well received. Barroilhet no longer goes ah! In the first two performances the trio of masks was encored, as was Don Giovanni's aria in the third. There's nothing to say about that except that it's very good!

It is good indeed that Don Giovanni, having been promised so many times, has been played, as it's a masterpiece; we can also be glad about the reception it's had from the public, as the performance, although better than what it generally was in the last performances before the revival, was not absolutely beyond criticism and was noticeably inaccurate in several respects. It's easy to find examples. Mozart's orchestration and melodies have been altered. Trombones have been added in several places, with moderation, but wrongly, since it is to misunderstand the intention and thought of the composer to treat this instrument as we do now. Mozart was sparing in his use of trombones, reserving them exclusively for scenes of terror and to accompany the funereal voice of the Commendatore. In any case, my main point is to ask: Who has the right to correct such a master? What composer today is placed so high that he dares give an orchestration lesson to Mozart and treat him de haut en bas?

Barroilhet has, it's true, given up his favourite interjection, but certainly not a host of extremely irritating decorations with which he believes he is rejuvenating melodies that are a thousand times fresher than the shrivelled grace notes daily imported from Italy.

Chapter 2 takes as its point of departure angelology, which provides the theological context for examining the devil before, during, and after his fall. Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa drew on traditions of interpretation that understood scripture as speaking of one adversary, an angel – Satan, Lucifer, serpent, and devil – who moves across Testaments, Old and New. While the three theologians agree on who the devil is – a fallen angel – they are not of one mind on how he came to fall from the near presence of God, his defeat, his continued existence, or his ultimate end. By interrogating the nature and purpose of angels, this chapter identifies how the Cappadocians construe the devil as a philosophical, theological, and spiritual problem.

The voyages of Columbus and his successors linked the two hemispheres, and this chapter surveys the positive and negative biological, cultural, and social consequences of this “Columbian Exchange.” Among these were the spread of disease and the transfer of plants, animals, and consumer goods, along with economic changes that led to social protests, revolts, warfare, and forced migrations in an increasingly interdependent world. Religious transformations, including the Protestant and Catholic Reformations and the creation of Sikhism, were interwoven with all of these developments, as religions, too, migrated and morphed. New urban social settings and cultural institutions, such as coffee and tea houses, theatres, and salons, offered men—and sometimes women—opportunities for entertainment, sociability, consumption, and the exchange of ideas, but the increasing contacts among peoples also resulted in more rigid notions of human difference.

Within a few short years, Paul Cullen systematically remade the Irish Catholic hierachy through a ruthless application of his influence in Rome. This chapter traces how he did so, where, and with what consequences, before turning to the campaign of parish missions that effectively embedded Tridentine Catholicism across Ireland.

Berlioz's distaste for rules also shows for what he castigates as ‘formules’, patterns taken off the shelf with no thought for relevance or beauty. In contrast, he has sympathy for composers who plough their own furrow, even if their execution is imperfect. Grétry's four-act opera Zémire et Azor, on a verse libretto by Jean-François Marmontel, was premiered at the Opéra-Comique on December 16, 1771; the story is a version of ‘Beauty and the Beast’. The run reviewed by Berlioz began on 29 June.

Attempts to restore old compositions to the repertoire of the Opéra- Comique, like the one I’m reviewing today, have so far been successful. Current audiences have never shown a lack of respect for those of the early years of the century by reacting against works that were well received by the previous generation. That's because these works, true masterpieces in some respects, demonstrate expressive qualities unaffected by time: forms change, proportions grow, artistic means become more numerous and powerful, and this necessarily produces a more or less obvious difference between the musical products of varying epochs. This difference does not always work to the advantage of new pieces, especially when it comes to comparing them with some past master whose style is free of formulas. What we call musically ‘old’ in the negative sense of the word seems old only because of formulas. This is regularly proved by experience. Several times I’ve showed first-rate musicians an aria from Gluck's Telemaco (an Italian opera he wrote long before his French ones) without revealing the composer's name; and there's not one of them who didn't take this aria for a fine excerpt from some modern opera he didn't know.

The only agent's papers found were those of Richard Drakeford, but as these were so nearly contemporaneous and give a flavour of the many and varied elements of accounting required, the first five pages of an example are displayed here.

The accounts were entered in a hard-backed ledger, with a very formal title:

St Pierre Accounts

Between W&B Jasper

Mr Trevanion

and myself

1744

An Account of goods delivered to the Buyers of La St Pierre sold at Gosport by Publick Sale the 1st September 1744 taken by his Majesties Ship the Kinsale Robert Young Esq. Commander

William and Benjamin Vaughan Brokers

On the cover of the ledger was recorded the prices:

Price of indigo £4 1s per hundredweight; coffee £6 11s or £6 10s per hundredweight; sugar 5s per pound; cotton 16p per pound

• • The cargo being sold here was sugar, coffee and indigo

• • The quantities were hundredweights, quarters and pounds, where 112 pounds made 1 hundredweight, and 28 pounds made 1 quarter • A pipe was a measure of wine, holding two hogsheads or 125 gallons • Casks held liquid or solid goods

• • ‘Tare’ indicates the weight of the barrel as opposed to its contents

• • The agent charged 2½ per cent on the value of every sale • The number of dealers, agents and associates is evidence of the wide network of businesses involved in trade

• • The sale of the cargo took place on 1 September, with payment for the different elements coming in over subsequent weeks

Introduction

Data convey information about greenhouse gas emissions, financial flows, and climate impacts. Such information is used to give meaning to the unfolding climate crisis and global efforts to respond to it. Moreover, data are assumed to increase transparency and accountability (see Gupta and van Asselt 2019), and related reporting and disclosure mechanisms work to facilitate continuous engagement with relevant governance fora and processes (Heyvaert 2018, 110–111). Importantly, in addition to supporting meaningmaking, transparency, accountability, and engagement, data themselves have emerged as a central means of climate change governance. They have become operational elements of institutionalized mobilization, organizing, and steering. At the global level, the United Nations (UN) Climate Change Secretariat, for example, relies on data to strategically structure governance processes, animate implementation activity, and coordinate between actor groups (Mai and Elsässer 2022), and at the transnational level, cross-border climate governance initiatives have begun to collect local climate data to position cities as central players in climate change governance (Mai 2024). Thus, rather than merely supporting or being the outputs of governance processes, data, in a very real sense, do governing work. They constitute and restructure relations between actors, create and sustain novel forms of power and authority, and disrupt existing modes of claiming legitimacy (see Johns 2021). This chapter refers to such governing work as the ‘datafication’ of climate change governance. As data transform ‘what counts as known, probable, certain, and in the process’ (Hong 2020, 1), they powerfully reconfigure existing and give rise to alternative modalities for governing.

In fourteenth-century Sweden, the depositions of several kings (Birger Magnusson in 1318, Magnus Eriksson in 1364 and Albrekt av Mecklenburg in 1389) were followed by the production of literary depictions of those monarchs’ reigns, pointing out their many faults, the wickedness of their advisors or the tyrannical nature of their rule. Some of these texts used allegorical imagery or satirical commentary to criticise kings such as Magnus Eriksson (r.1319–64) and Albrekt (r.1364–89), or employed other literary devices to present preceding or succeeding periods as more peaceful, prosperous or righteous. Thus, both Latin and vernacular literary works could serve a legitimating function, presenting the actions of the rebels as well as the succeeding regime as lawful and legitimate. In doing so, they can serve as valuable sources to describe the ongoing opposition and resistance to fourteenth-century Swedish kings.

Parts of the Revelations of St Birgitta (Birgersdotter, c.1303–73) and the text Qualiter Regnavit Rex Magnus (also known as the Libellus de Magno Erici Rege) depict the misrule of King Magnus Eriksson in similar ways, criticising his tendency to use foreigners in his service and his failure to heed the advice of the native nobility.

The fnal words about Dyngley's perpenditur preface can only be written when other witnesses are found. Although attempts to locate them have so far failed, I am grateful to Livia Visser-Fuchs and Farley P. Katz for directing me to a footnoted citation for the preface as transcribed by James in his 1899 Catalogue. The footnote appears in an article by Arthur Landgraf on textual criticism in the twelfth century. The note is important because Landgraf connected Dyngley's preface to the centuries-long tradition of linking exegetical styles with individual patristic authors. In the Peterhouse preface he noticed words that the canonist Huguccio had used in a section dealing with guidelines for distinguishing corrupt from authentic readings.

In 2025 at a landmark African Union meeting in Nairobi, dubbed ‘the Africa we want’, peace, security and financial independence were tabled as the strategy to secure future development and stability. It came in the wake of a UN Resolution to fund African-led peace efforts, to create a ‘peace infrastructure’. Kenya is a major North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and major non-NATO (MNNA) US ally, a designation that might partially explain Kenya’s ill-advised interventions in Haiti, a Pan-African symbol of resistance to slavery and colonialism, and the Sudan, an ancient African kingdom now fractured by civil war. Bound by common origins and a shared if imagined destiny, fragmented interests have seen peace and stability remain elusive at both national and Pan-African levels, against the powerful and persistent idea of a united ‘Africa’. Pan-Africanism was always about African peoples, not states. This chapter examines the ways in which a dynamic Pan-Africanism nonetheless provides a crucial political and creative framework within which key aspects of Ngugi’s work take shape, from Kenya as nascent national project, to Ngugi’s concerns with issues of language and identity. Frantz Fanon, whose political theories on decolonisation left an enduring mark on Ngugi and an entire generation of scholars and activists, underscores the power and promise of this legacy.

The three days had passed monotonously. Egon and Franziska avoided each other, and only met at meals and tea-time. In the hours that used to be filled with lively chat, there was now silence, as if the two had nothing to say to each other. Judith paid no attention to this on the first day, but on the second day, she noticed it, and on the third she remarked on it openly, so that Egon and Franziska changed tack again and struck up a conversation that was lively, witty, and seemingly just as before. But no one laughed. The words they exchanged were devoid of all spontaneity.

Early on the fourth day a telegram arrived from Gruz, in which the count announced that he’d arrive, not that morning as planned, but late in the evening.

They passed the piece of paper from hand to hand, with no one commenting. But then Franziska withdrew to her room and when she was upstairs in her room, she gazed into the flames burning cheerfully in the hearth. Hannah emerged from the adjacent room to add another log, but really because she saw that her mistress and friend was troubled and wanted to talk.

“Sit down on the cushion here,” Franziska said after a while. “There; good. And now stay here and tell me something nice, something kind, and something to comfort me. I need it so badly. I’m longing for Vienna, for society and people, and I only wish we were gone from here.”