Blair A. Ruble

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Music’s hold over Naples, Italy, has remained omnipresent throughout its history. It is, in a sense, a city founded on song.

How Naples became Europe’s great musical machine

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What, precisely, is “Porgy and Bess”? A musical? An opera? High art, or middlebrow culture? A sympathetic and ground-breaking treatment of African American life, or a racist regurgitation of demeaning stereotypes? 

“Porgy and Bess” at 80

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Residents, rather than planners, ultimately determine a city plan's success when they decide whether to live, shop, play, and linger in the space a designer has created. 