Martin Wehrmann

Born in 1873 in a poor neighbourhood in Naples, Enrico Caruso conquered the world with his singing voice. At the age of 27 he got a contract at the Scala in Milan, and his already considerable popularity skyrocketed thanks to the invention of the gramophone. He sold millions of records, and garnered international acclaim. In 1903 he moved to New York to perform at the prestigious Metropolitan Opera, in the role of Radames. But his riches and fame attracted the attention of the Mafia, who started blackmailing him. He felt trapped by his fame and died at just 48 years old. Biographer Francesco Canessa, the music critic Jürgen Kesting and the composer Micha Hamel explain the ups and downs of the man behind the timeless Italian voice.

From the translucent golden eggs of the Tibetan bearded vulture to those of the British guillemot with their Jackson Pollock-like splashes, German ornithologist Max Schönwetter (1874-1961) collected them all. He devoted his life to oology, the study of birds’ eggs. But while Schönwetter created order in his world of eggs, chaos broke out in the world around him on the eve of the Second World War.