Peter Joseph von Lindpainter, a German musician who also adapted the vampire for the German stage, was a violinist who had studied at Augsburg and Munich prior to becoming the Music director of the Isarton Theater in 1812. In 1891 he moved to Stuttgart as the Kapellmeister of the city’s orchestra, where he would remain for the rest of his life. Throughout his long career he was among the country’s most honored conductors, although he was known more for his technical proficiency and dramatic effects rather than originality. He spent a period in the 1850s as the guest conductor of the New Philharmonic Society in London.

During is long life, he composed 28 operas, Der Vampyr being among the two or three most successful. He set the plot in France and named his vampire character Graf (or Count) Aubri. In the plot, Aubri convinced the father of Isolde, the object of his desire, to break off her engagement to his love, Graf Hippolyte, and allow him to marry her. In the end, Hippolyte fatally wounded him, but as he lay dying, he made Hippolyte swear not to reveal his death until midnight. He had still hoped to prey on Isolde, but she protected herself by claiming God’s protection. As his time ran out, without the needed blood, Aubri died.

Then it first appeared, several months after opera of Heinrich Marschner, Lindpainter’s production competed successfully with the other Der Vampyr, but it was forgotten through most of the twentieth-century until the vampire revival of the 1980s aroused interest in both composers.


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This weekend Rainman and I are planning to go see "Bodies...the Exhibition" that features more than 250 "real, whole, and partial human body specimens...dissected and preserved," providing up-close looks inside skeletal, muscular, reproductive, respiratory, circulatory, other human body systems. Many whole-body specimens "are dissected in vivid athletic poses."




The Floss Silk Tree, a conspicuous "autumn bloomer" here and there around San Diego, has been showing off its pinkish or purplish, hibiscus-like flowers for at least a month now. The broad, heavy trunks of this South American import, studded with fat, cone-shaped spines, make it easy to identify. Take a look around...the show of flowers is spectacular!