"Mozart in the Palace, Rodin, Oil Wrestlers: Istanbul Picks
(The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Bloomberg.)
By Ayla Jean Yackley
June 21 (Bloomberg) -- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's ``The Abduction From the Seraglio'' returns this week to the setting that inspired the opera: the Ottoman Empire's 15th-century Topkapi Palace in Istanbul.
Mozart loved the boom of the davul, the bass drum to which Ottoman soldiers marched, and it underpins the famous choruses in ``Abduction.'' His ancestors may not have been so fond of the sound. Twice in the two centuries before the composer's birth, invading Ottoman Turkish armies reached the gates of Vienna, where Mozart wrote the opera, inspiring fear as well as a lasting fascination with the Orient."
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