Opera for Beginners (Part 3 of 3)

[cahn]

I talked about Opera for Beginners for my family reunion talk and used much of the advice I was given here, thank you! :)

-I brought speakers, because there isn't much use in giving an opera talk if you can't hear the music! The hilarious thing was that I was not the only one who had audio/audiovisual components to my presentation, but I was the only one who had brought speakers. I had been a little bitter about lugging them all around Montana, but less so when they turned out to be broadly useful :) What was more irritating was that after they worked fine when I tried them out in my office, they didn't work at all for a while when I was trying to give the talk. Finally my cousin's teenager, who was acting as unofficial tech support, suggested rebooting as a last resort, and of course that worked. Sigh.

-A couple of people mentioned talking about where one might go looking for opera. My biggest recommendations to a newbie are the following:
1.The Chandos Opera in English CDs, without which I would still hate opera today. I highly highly recommend all the Mozart ones, particularly the da Ponte operas (Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosi fan tutte), and the bel canto comedies (e.g., Barber of Seville, The Elixir of Love), and dis-recommend their Verdi except Don Carlos (for some reason Verdi tends to come out a bit muddled). Their French opera also seems to be very good, and I absolutely adore their Eugene Onegin (which stars Thomas Hampson and Kiri te Kanawa).

2. Met On Demand, which comes with a free 7-day trial. People who know a lot about opera rag on the Met for not being adventurous in its staging and concept, which, fair, but for a beginner, in my opinion, that's exactly what you want, and you can't do better than the Met for gorgeous staging and costumes, great singers, and great videography, which I didn't even know would affect me until I started watching a bunch of these... and... it does actually make a huge difference when watching video. (Watching live is, of course, different.)

-I showed several clips, one of which was a 3-minute clip of Kaufmann/Hampson/Salminen in the auto-da-fe scene from Don Carlo. (Alagna/Keenlyside/Furlanetto is still the whole version of Don Carlo I would recommend, but for auto-da-fe out of context I thought the former was better, not least because it didn't have a giant weeping Jesus in the background.) I explained beforehand the background about how Posa is Prince Carlo's best friend but also has the relationship where he has sworn fealty to King Philip. (I have uploaded the clip here (google drive video clip, ~3 minutes) -- mildredofmidgard, I know music/opera is Not Your Thing but this is the moment in Don Carlo I was talking about, check it out) and my big triumph, as far as I am concerned, is that when the clip ended my cousin cried out, "Oh, that's so sad!" MY WORK HERE IS DONE.

-My other great triumph was that E was curious about what I said about Don Giovanni. Being her, she could not care less about Don G himself -- she was perfectly content with a limited understanding that he was the Bad Guy -- but she was particularly interested in what I said about Don G coming to a sticky end, and asked about it the next day. Once I further explained that there was a singing statue and that in many productions Don G disappeared into flames with the statue at the end, both she and A really wanted to watch it, so that afternoon we all snuggled up on the couch and watched "Don Giovanni, a cenar teco" (this one with Rodney Gilfrey) and they still ask for "the statue opera" on occasion. (That's the only part they have watched or are interested in watching, or that I am interested in playing for them, until they're a lot older. Well, okay, "O statua gentilissima," but that's along the same lines.)

-Since you guys said it was fun for people to recognize music in opera, another short clip I showed was from Thais, because, well, I don't know if it's all Koreans or just my particular family, but all our extended relatives LOOOOOVE Meditation from Thais and all of us cousins who play violin (or piano, if that cousin happened to be near one of the cousins who played violin) have had to play that song approximately six million times, every time a third cousin twice removed came to visit. There was much groaning when the melody was revealed :)

-It turns out my aunt (uncle's wife) really likes opera!!!! We are already making plans to go to Salzburg or Italy sometime and watch opera :D (well, pipe dreams right now... I certainly wouldn't go until my kids are older)

(Part 1 was where I asked for help; Part 2 was an outtake of this post about emoting in opera)

Comments

[jenett]

Thank you so much for this series of posts.

(I am now contemplating the idea of building a list of operas I would like to watch, at least in video form, and what that order might be, and what should be on it, given that these days, there's a fairly wide range of stuff handy.)

I've sung a (cut down, in English) Magic Flute, which I love because it hits my id for musical ridiculousness in about eight places, I've sung Dido and Aeneas, which I also rather like (but has a lousy alto line, and we were desperate for altos, so mezzo-me had to sing alto.) And I know bits and pieces of a lot of others. And I've seen one really wonderful Italian opera in the 'performed in the town square in a hill town in Tuscany, with people sitting on the cathedral steps to listen' but can I remember what the opera was, no I cannot. (It was 20+ years ago.)

I'm actually tempted to start with Magic Flute as a proof of project, and then to go chronologically as much as I can find performances for, and see what I think of that.

[seekingferret]

I'm glad it went so well! The story about "the statue opera" is my favorite part.

[cahn]

Oh, Magic Flute IS MY FAVORITE. (I once got to sing the First Lady in the "Hm! Hm! Hm! Hm!" scene (in English translation) and loved it so so much.) My first Flute was the movie which is also good but a little odd, and I have an absolute fondness for this production, which was my second Flute -- it's an interesting and sometimes odd staging in the sense of being half fairy tale, half Enlightenment, but it's got Simon Keenlyside as Papageno and Dorothea Roschmann as Pamina and I loved how all the characters became awfully human. The Met also has a very fantastical-fairy-tale-esque production in English that I like, though not as much as the other ones here, but seekingferret likes it better, so it's clearly a matter of taste :) ) (...I should add youtube to my list above!)

[cahn]

Thanks, I am glad too! I can't believe that I never thought of showing that bit to my kids before, they love that kind of over-the-top-ness :D

[seekingferret]

I have a new opinion about this. The best Magic Flute is now "Scalia/Ginsburg". (But also The Met's Magic Flute is one of those performances you need to see live to appreciate, Taymor works at such an impressive scale.)

[mildred_of_midgard]

Oof, you're right, that scene in Don Carlo was intense! The look on Carlo's face at the end when the guards/courtiers/whoever pour in between him and Posa and herd them off to their separate destinies is heartbreaking.

[cahn]

WAIT I knew about the existence of this from you but I thought it was a ~modern opera~ -- which I'm not opposed to in principle, I like modern music, but sometimes I feel like it's all trying so Hard and why can't we have more singspiels and, WELL. I just went and listened to "You are searching in vain for a bright line solution" OMG wow!

Yeah, I can totally see the Taymor working really well as a live production; I definitely have had my views changed on things like this, once I actually got to see it. One of these days I'll come visit you to go see an opera at the Met :P

[cahn]

I knoooow right?? Carlo :((((( And Posa trying to telepathically get him to understand <3

[seekingferret]

"You are searching in vain for a bright line solution" IS SO GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD

[cahn]

YES! I WANT MORE

[mildred_of_midgard]

Wait, I missed that! *rewatches*

Ohhh noooooeesss. :-((( Maaan. These tragic stories.

While we're keeping up the parallels, I maintain that Katte was also, at one point, trying to telepathically get Fritz to understand. (I hope he did. I think he did. IN MY HEADCANON HE DID.)

In summary, around the time he was being condemned to death, Katte started frantically toeing the royal line. He recanted his atheism, starting loudly praying and loudly singing hymns, and wrote a last farewell letter to Fritz in which he urged total submission to the King's will and reminded him that he had always done so and had tried to talk him out of the escape plan.

The key thing to know here is that Fritz and Katte were freethinkers (the former ended up being the most prominent royal freethinker in Europe), and Friedrich Wilhelm was suuuper pious. One of his major contentions with his son and heir was that Friedrich was not falling into line with the specific doctrine FW subscribed to. A lot of Fritz's "rehabilitation" in prison after the escape attempt was an attempt to indoctrinate him into the right religious beliefs.

Well, the moment I read what Katte was doing, I saw a man who was desperately trying to impress the King into giving him a last-minute reprieve, while trusting Fritz to understand (with hopes of being able to explain someday). At least one historian I've found agrees.

Since after Katte's execution, Fritz also went through the motions of doing whatever his father demanded and paying lip service to everything he was told to believe, while privately keeping up a campaign of increasingly successful passive resistance, and when he became king, proceeding to do whatever the heck he wanted, including publicly proclaiming his lack of religion, I maintain that Fritz understood exactly what Katte was up to and only wished it had been successful.

Supported by Friedrich's later words when he was establishing religious toleration: "One can compel by force some poor wretch to utter a certain form of words, yet he will deny to it his inner consent; thus the persecutor has gained nothing. But if one goes back to the origins of society, it is completely clear that the sovereign has no right to dictate the way in which the citizens will think." [emphasis mine]

I'm positive Friedrich had himself in mind, and hopefully his beloved Katte too.

Omg, my boys, now I'm furious all over again. And sad. :-( </3 (Thank you for letting me ramble about my fandom again. I hope it's interesting.)

[cahn]

ahahaha, I am happy to let you ramble on about your fandom not least because it affects mine :D (and also because I can also ramble on about mine, lol)

wowwwwwww yeah those words from Friedrich are quiiiiite telling, I agree with you!

And, ahhhh, another parallel! Carlos and Posa are both super freethinker progressive types (Posa even more than Carlos), and one of the big sources of conflict in the play (and opera) is that King Philip and his advisors are.. not a progressive type (also super Catholic; see also Spanish Inquisition and the part where Protestant rebellions in Flanders were dealt with super harshly). Although the parallel fails in the sense that a) Philip is kind of fascinated with Posa anyway, and b) Posa never recants, he just doubles down on presenting himself as the villain, heh.

Also also, go back to the bit where the King taps Posa with the sword as he makes him a duke: you can see this Posa tense up and wince at that point. (THOMAS HAMPSON. [the baritone who is playing Posa] HE IS SO GREAT. But I digress!)

[mildred_of_midgard]

OMG, that's an awesome parallel! Friedrich had veeeery strong words about Catholicism and the Inquisition. And in the words of one of his biographers, "Frederick cannot have been the first nominally Christian European sovereign not to have believed in Christian doctrine, but he was surely the first to parade his skepticism so brazenly."

Although the parallel fails in the sense that a) Philip is kind of fascinated with Posa anyway, and b) Posa never recants, he just doubles down on presenting himself as the villain, heh

Yeah, the Philip+Posa dynamic seems to be wildly different from the Friedrich Wilhelm+Katte dynamic. I guess you can't copy your sources exactly, have to be creative somewhere. ;)

Also, I'm guessing Posa never recants because he's never condemned to death? Atheism (or Deism) is not a philosophy that lends itself well to martyrdom. The pagan Roman emperors had no trouble getting their atheist subjects to sacrifice to the state gods while mocking the whole affair; when they tried to get Christians to do the same...well, that's where most of the early saints come from.

Also also, Katte's recantation took the form of claiming that he only pretended to be atheist because he moved in circles where that was fashionable and made your conversation seem sparkling and brilliant. I am reminded of Katherine Parr, Henry VIII's sixth wife, about to be arrested by Henry's order for having said one too many things that made it sound like she supported Protestantism. Fortunately for her head, she happened to be walking with Henry when the official came to arrest her, and she talked fast. Specifically, she said that she only said these controversial things in Henry's presence to distract him from the pain of his ulcers, as well as to be instructed by his wise counterarguments. He totally fell for it, chased off the guy who was trying to arrest his wife, and stayed on good terms with her until his death. She was the "lived" in "divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, lived."

I wish Friedrich Wilhelm I had been as gullible as Henry VIII. :( Instead, he said things to Katte's grandfather like, "Look, I'm being nice to you and *only* beheading your grandson, because I like you and your son so much. *Really* what he deserves is to be torn apart with red-hot pincers, but I'm merciful."

Also also, go back to the bit where the King taps Posa with the sword as he makes him a duke: you can see this Posa tense up and wince at that point.

I don't have to go back, I noticed it the first time! And again the second time. That is one sad panda. :(

Please ramble on about your fandom, it's fun!

[cahn]

ahahaha oh yes in Schiller Posa has this whole long soliloquy (which is apparently a hugely famous soliloquy if one is German) on being progressive and freethinking and on the side of Freedom and really skirting heresy if not actually being completely heretical. At one point he says something along the lines of "Chance... I mean God... brought me here!" and it's totally clear that he's an atheist who is just barely toeing the party line. (In the first draft of the opera that "Chance... God..." bit is kept, but in revision I think Verdi realized he'd changed Posa enough that it didn't quite fit anymore and he threw it out. Opera!Posa is still a freethinker, in the sense of being a big proponent of Freedom and daring to stand up to Philip and -- oh, here, I can't help but give you another clip, , it's only three minutes and will show you exactly the bit I'm talking about, and Furlanetto and Keenlyside are just brilliant together -- anyway, but I feel in the opera he comes out as much less fanatical/manipulative and more sort of "conventionally" honorable and loyal (and in a way that I'm a complete sucker for).

Yeah, the Philip+Posa dynamic seems to be wildly different from the Friedrich Wilhelm+Katte dynamic. I guess you can't copy your sources exactly, have to be creative somewhere. ;)

Hee, yeah.

Also, I'm guessing Posa never recants because he's never condemned to death?

Ugh, it's much more complicated than that, actually, and I would say that he does consider himself as a Martyr to the Cause, but that cause isn't atheism. In the play, I claim that he just gets lost in all his complicated plots :P So he's totally fanatical about progressivism in general and Flanders in particular, and everything else seems subsumed to that. When it looks like he's screwed up his plotting so that the King is bound to think Carlos is having an affair with the Queen (and thus decide to kill Carlos), he decides the best course of action is to frame HIMSELF as being in love with the Queen so that the king will kill HIM instead. If you think I am sounding frustrated with Posa here, you are correct! This is actually the culmination of several other complicated plans Posa has in the play, which go terribly wrong because he doesn't ever TELL, say, his best friend that he's plotting all this stuff involving him.

Oh, here, I found where I wrote about it: The manipulativeness also manifests in Schiller!Rodrigo also never actually telling Carlos about any of his Sekret Plans regarding Carlos' papers and such. In the play, in lieu of the auto-da-fe, Schiller!Posa actually shows Carlos' papers to the King minus a problematic letter-from-the-Queen, in order to clear Carlos' name with respect to having had an affair with her. He has a whole monologue where he ruminates about how he's being secretive, and things might well have turned out very differently had he actually just bothered to tell Carlos that he wasn't going to give the King the problematic letter. Because Carlos, understandably, thinks he's shown the King everything, and he is thinking along these lines:

CARLOS (lost in deep thought).
And from me
Has he concealed all this? And why from me?

(We all wonder this, Carlos!)

CARLOS.
He loved me—loved me greatly: I was dear
As his own soul is to him. That I know—
Of that I've had a thousand proofs. But should
The happiness of millions yield to one?
Must not his country dearer to him prove
Than Carlos?

It turns out this is not true, or at least not provably true, but Carlos can hardly be blamed for thinking so. (And indeed Posa says later, " I have created in my Carlos' soul/ A paradise for millions!" and one might suspect that if his creation hadn't turned out so well, that he might have not loved Carlos so well...?)

Indeed Posa's secret plans drive all the rest of the action of the play: Carlos, understandably worried that the Queen might be in trouble if Rodrigo is betraying him, goes and talks to Eboli to try to get her to get him in to warn the Queen. Posa, alarmed by this (because he does not trust Eboli), bursts in and arrests Carlos ("He is mad! He raves! Believe him not!" in another bit where the opera version makes Rodrigo look WAY more sympathetic). But it's too late, Posa thinks: Carlos has already told Eboli he loves the Queen. Then Posa basically sees no way out but to frame himself as in love with the queen and get assassinated by Philip. GAH.

Opera!Posa is just as dumb, though less manipulative and so I love him a lot more: he simply decides he wants to save Carlos' life and Flanders, and sacrifices himself by framing himself as the "traitor of Flanders." (This is actually rather more nonsensical than the play, as it doesn't seem to make up for the fact that opera!Carlo did draw his sword against the King, but whatever, it's an opera.)

Ohhhhh I didn't know that about Katherine Parr! (I knew she was the survivor :) ) That's awesome.

Haha, thanks for letting me ramble on about my fandom!

[mildred_of_midgard]

Oooh, that was a really interesting ramble!

"Chance... I mean God... brought me here!"
aLOL. I could totes see Fritz or Katte saying this.

Thank you for the summary of Posa's nonsensical plots! Omfg, you're right, that is so frustrating. I like manipulative types, but only when they're several orders of magnitude more intelligent than everyone around them. This...does not sound like that.

This is actually the culmination of several other complicated plans Posa has in the play, which go terribly wrong because he doesn't ever TELL, say, his best friend that he's plotting all this stuff involving him.

Oh, Posa, noooooo!! You have to actually tell your BFF about your plots! *facepalm*

Now, I see your fandom's Very Stupid Plot and raise you my own fandom's Very Stupid Plot. :DD

Specifically, the attempted escape attempt that got Katte killed and Fritz imprisoned for years and traumatized for life. This plot was so poorly planned and executed that it stands out to everyone who knows the first thing about Frederick the Great's later life as "How the fuck was this plan devised by the same guy who won a three-front war against three of the biggest European superpowers?"

Now, I'm sympathetic to the idea that we should not expect an eighteen-year-old to come up with an A+ plan for escaping from a lifetime of abuse at the hands of an absolute monarch (which is a level up from your normal abusive father). But the difference in quality is just so drastic that some of his biographers have speculated that it was less of an escape plan than a ploy for attention. Fritz may have wanted to get caught, or at least subconsciously. I think the case for this is definitely plausible, although I think there are a lot of other factors that account for the ridiculously boneheaded plan.

Now here's the boneheaded plan so you can judge for yourself.

First and foremost, Fritz and Katte told practically everyone, well in advance. Between the two of them, so many people knew about this plan that it's only a surprise it didn't reach the King *sooner*. Then everything went comically wrong. Katte was supposed to get permission to leave Berlin. He didn't. So he was stuck there. Fritz decided to make his move anyway. While on a road trip with his father. He made a handful of attempts, none of which made it more than about two feet past the front door? Something like that. He dressed in the most conspicuous manner possible, to the point where everyone knew something was up, even those not in the know, and one guy was like, "*Please* take that off, your father is going to *kill* you if he sees you wearing that."

Reader, he got caught.

Here, look. I have a clip for you! From 21:40 - 22:37. It's taken some creative license with the details, but the spirit of the absurdity should come through. The coat, the getting caught in the front yard, the way everybody knows...

What happened was that one of the many, many people who knew about the plan got cold feet and fessed up to the King, who ordered his son taken into custody.

At this point, Fritz is still dramatically underestimating the extent of his father's batshittery. He taunts him with the fact that he was trying to escape (giving credence to the fact that he may have thought getting caught might get him what he wanted--better treatment--without all the trouble of going to England via France). Then, when asked to name his conspirators, he implicates everyone. (He may have been trying to plea bargain, especially given the fact that no one's tracks were well hidden--more on that later.) He's also supposed to have said something along the lines of "I don't care what you do to me, but I would care very much if something happened to my friends who were involved, whom I have conveniently just named for you."

Friiitz. *facepalm*

Now, once word of the escape attempt got out, it was a huge scandal throughout Europe. Virtually everyone's sympathies were with Fritz (and Katte as an afterthought). Heads of state like Great Britain and the Holy Roman Empire were writing to Friedrich Wilhelm, begging him to please take a chill pill and not kill everyone involved. Katte was apparently mentioned by name by George II.

This is the context in which you should understand that FW's lackey, who was ordered to arrest Katte, in Berlin, was like, "*cough* Katte, I'm coming to arrest you in *cough* three hours. *cough cough*"

Katte: "Yes, yes, getting the hell out of Dodge any minute now."

The arresting official was reported to have been extremely shocked and disappointed that Katte was still there to be arrested three hours later. He had packed and made plans on where he was going to flee to, but in in all that time hadn't actually budged.

Contemporary and modern sources differ on why Katte, with all that warning that his arrest was imminent, dithered until his window of opportunity for escape had closed. My own guess is that he was undecided between whether it was better to be a live dog or a dead lion.

(The third main conspirator, condemned to death, had no such hesitation. He immediately escaped to England, where FW's attempts to have him extradited were unsuccessful, then didn't come back to Prussia until Fritz became king ten years later. Then apparently spent the rest of his life complaining that the money and honors he got from Fritz in gratitude were not commensurate with his sacrifice. Now, Fritz, not known in general for being generous or appreciative on the one hand, but on the other, also probably not impressed by the complaints of the live dog when he was still regularly having nightmares about the dead lion.)

(P.S. I am no making no personal value judgments on the intelligence or courage of the respective strategies. I respect both.)

MEANWHILE. It's also possible that Katte, in addition to maybe not wanting to leave Fritz to face the music all alone (again, my guess, but at least one biographer agrees), may have not had time to escape before destroying all the evidence. There was apparently a shit ton of material evidence of the conspiracy. To the extent that we can trust Fritz's sister's memoirs, she reports herself and their mother--who were both in on the plan--frantically destroying all the incriminating letters and writing new ones. She records that there were 1,500 such letters and they only had time to get to about 700 of them in the three days they had. Yes, you read those numbers right. No, that was not a typo.

Interesting thought: if Schiller was having his characters play games with letters, he may have based that on this episode.

So Katte may have had a bunch of letters of his own to destroy, plus all those valuables Fritz had given him for safekeeping to hide, before he could leave, who knows. This is the theory of some biographers for why he lingered so long when he knew his arrest was imminent.

Then, under interrogation, Katte couldn't very well deny that he was in on the plan or that he hadn't told anyone. He did say that he had tried to talk Fritz out of it, but Fritz was determined to leave with or without him. But then when asked if he would have left the country with Fritz, if push came to shove, he answered yes. He said he loved Fritz too much and couldn't tell him no.

KAAAATTE! That sort of thing is deniable! Especially given that the official death penalty charge was desertion from the army. Just say you wouldn't have gone! Lie a little! Fritz will forgive you.

Sigh.

As for Katte's motivations, I don't think he saw himself as a martyr for anything except his love of Fritz. And a reluctant one at that. See: trying to talk Fritz out of the escape attempt, not sneaking out of Berlin when his commanding officer refused him permission to go legally, probably hoping the whole thing would blow over. And then I think he couldn't decide whether to save his skin or stick by Fritz, and made a sort of non-decision that was effectively the latter.

According to Fritz's sister, Katte had said to her before all the shit hit the fan, "I have written to him and clearly stated that I refuse to follow him. If he undertakes such a move, I shall answer with my head. It will be for a pretty cause, but the crown prince will not abandon me." But then Fritz seems to have been a more strong-willed personality than Katte in general, as well as having something to gain from this specific move.

In the end, as you know, Katte died with all the fortitude of a martyr. He made a very conspicuous display of courage and loyalty, and if you ask me, he was playing simultaneously to three audiences. One, doing his family proud (his last letters show him trying to comfort them). Two, sending Fritz the message every way he could that he didn't blame him and wasn't suffering. Three, as we've discussed, trying to get a last-minute change of heart from Friedrich Wilhelm.

All of which is to say, at great length, here lies another major difference between Katte and Posa, the reluctant follower of his friend's stupid plot vs. the enthusiastic deviser of stupid plots involving his friend. But the parallels are just as clear.

Oh! I was going to ramble about the huge contrast with Fritz's later fame as master deviser of less stupid plots. So, of course he was much older, and he had an army, and he had absolute power instead of being under the thumb of someone with absolute power, and all that good stuff. But here's one thing that, in all my reading about the Katte affair, I have not seen anyone comment on, including all the people boggling about how FREDERICK the freaking GREAT came up with that escape attempt, and who are you and what have you done with Frederick the Great?

Well, Fritz later became pathologically secretive about all his plans. Notoriously so. He said things like, "Three can keep a secret if two be dead," and "If I discovered my own skin knew what I was going to do, I would have it peeled off and thrown away," and how he didn't worry about foreign powers spying on him during his wars, because "in order to know my secrets, you need to corrupt me personally, and that isn’t easy." Things like this get quoted everywhere by everyone.

Well, I've seen ONE biographer comment that this probably comes from having to keep so many secrets from his father for so long. And yes, this was the man who, in his twenties, would later sneak all his friends outside the palace and into a wood or cave so they could practice their forbidden chamber music.

But NO ONE has apparently considered that MAYBE the time when he told EVERYONE about his Very Secret Escape Attempt and he was imprisoned and forced to watch his best friend/possible love of his life get beheaded before his very eyes was RELEVANTLY TRAUMATIC. The thing about trauma is that people take away ideas about how the world works from their extremely memorable experiences, often ideas more subtle than this, and then proceed to over-apply those ideas in their most extreme version to everything that ever happens to them for the rest of their lives (or until they get therapy). "Telling people your plans ends in catastrophe for everyone involved" seems like a pretty obvious candidate for this phenomenon.

/ExcessiveUseofCapslock

So, wow, yeah, I kind of wonder how much this particular plot was at the forefront of Schiller's mind.

Ohhhhh I didn't know that about Katherine Parr! (I knew she was the survivor :) ) That's awesome.

It is! It's one of my favorite anecdotes about Katherine. She was, by all accounts, a highly intelligent and strong-willed woman who had a significant influence on her stepdaughter, future Elizabeth I.

[mildred_of_midgard]

I watched the clip (thank you), and wow, yeah, Posa is incredibly intense. Props to whoever's playing him. And Philip is so sinister. "But beware of the Grand Inquisitor," omg. It gave me the shivers.

My fandom's parallel here is that Friedrich, in all his copious spare time in between trying to singlehandedly micromanage a country from the top down and waging expansionist wars on all his neighbors (the man apparently slept five hours a night max and lived on coffee*), composed music and played the flute near-professionally and, what is relevant for our purposes, wrote libretti for operas he had commissioned. And one in particular, Montezuma, reminds me of Posa's speech, or at least what little I know about Montezuma does.

I'll just quote one of Friedrich's biographers quoting the relevant parties:

"The greatest work by Frederick and Graun is deemed to be Montezuma: ‘Graun has surpassed himself with the music’, Frederick told his sister. The monarch was adapting it for the carnival of 1754. Frederick worked some of his religious prejudices into a didactic text. ‘What,’ says the Aztec, ‘shall I think of a religion which teaches you to hold all others in contempt … Our religion is more perfect … it commands that we should love all mortals …’ ‘You are right to assume that for Montezuma I am interested in making Cortez into a tyrant,’ he wrote to Algarotti in Padua, ‘and as a result we can unleash, in the music itself, a few jibes at the Catholic religion; but I am forgetting you are in one of the countries of the Inquisition; excuse me, and I hope I shall see you soon in a land of heretics where even opera can serve to reform manners and destroy superstition.'"

So yes, I think Friedrich would have approved of the thrust of this speech. (Regardless of whether he liked Schiller in general, which apparently he didn't. Though I don't know what work(s) he was basing that on, or even if he was basing it on what he had read by Schiller as opposed to an unshakable dislike of German language and literature, and also the fact that his motto, aside from "Sleep when you're dead" was always "If you can't say something nice, say something as vitriolic as you can.")

* Ask me about the time he decided to use himself as an experimental test subject for whether it was possible, with enough coffee, to do without sleep altogether. Fritz, you're crazy, ILU so much.

[mildred_of_midgard]

This post has become "Opera for Beginners and Frederick the Great for Intermediate Students." :P

[mildred_of_midgard]

Oh, one of the secret-keeping quotes that gets repeated all over the place because it's one of his witty retorts was when he first came to the throne, was planning something (now known to be the invasion of Silesia), and everyone wanted to know if there was going to be a war and where and when.

When one courtier was trying to winkle the truth out of him, Friedrich beckoned him over and took him by the hand. "Can you keep a secret?" he asked, sotto voce.

"Oh, yes, Your Majesty." The guy started to get excited.

"Well, so can I!"

Fritz was a first-rate troll, all his life.

But of course, reading that, all I can think is, "Yes, you learned that the hard way, and then never unlearned it. SOMEBODY GET THIS MAN A THERAPIST!"

[alcanis_ivennil]

I wish I could get my family into opera... grandma gladly listens to my rants about it and she appreciates Pretty Singers (she knows who Jonas is ;)) and mom occasionally can be persuaded to come to the opera with me but isn't much into it, although she enjoyed Rigoletto, Zauberflöte, and Die Räuber (we saw that in the Wien Volksoper in German). On the other hand she didn't like Billy Budd because the subtext flew over her head and I didn't want to explain "mom this is a gay opera". Plus the music is not exactly something you can whistle XD

I wish I could go to the Munich Don Carlo next year but it's a bit far away... but Tézier. And Harteros. And Elina.

[cahn]

ahahaha... I wouldn't even think about getting my parents into opera, there's no way. It's hard enough getting them to listen to musicals! My mom is also way too practical; her reaction to Miss Saigon was, "What a waste of time to commit suicide. She should just get a JOB." I can imagine what she would have to say about Puccini and Verdi :) I'd looooove to be able to talk about opera with my sister but it's just really not her thing.

whaaaaaat, Tezier and Harteros and Elina?? Are they broadcasting it in any way??

Wiener Staatsoper is doing Don Carlo in September with Pape and Keenlyside and Harteros, the one picture makes it look like a terrible modern production but I am SO WATCHING the broadcast in Sept if at all humanly possible, I can't possibly pass up the chance to see Rene and Simon together. Are you close enough to Vienna to actually go?? (I see also Hampson is doing Germont in Sept. but you probably don't have the deep-seated need I do to see Hampson do Germont EVERY SINGLE TIME, it's a bit embarrassing to admit how many Germonts of his I've tracked down)

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know if the Munich one will be broadcast but hope... (also, Abdrazakov and Castronovo)


Vienna is like an hour driving so I can get there easily but the Don Carlo is Sartori aka NOPE, so... broadcast it is. I think they also have Zhidkova who is a great Eboli! She was in That infamous Carsen production and she looks like Miranda Otto. A lot.

Vienna Don Carlo is still the same vaguely 19th century cheap-ass minimalistic affair, I think. With Rodrigo dressed like Geralt of Rivia and Filippo having a uniform he probably stole from Gremin. It was filmed a few times before. Not even Furlanetto and Dima could save it.

[cahn]

Lol never heard of Sartori. Guess there's a reason why, haha? Looking forward to hearing Zhidkova!!

Ugh whyyyyyy. I'm pretty sure I've seen clips of that production. I mean if you can't afford to stage a big auto-da-fe, I get that, but at least give Philip a nice outfit, geez. Like the Vienna Simon Boccanegra was fairly minimalistic and okay had a couple of weird costume choices, but I still thought it came across nicely.

(Is Furlanetto/Dima on rutracker? because I'm still willing to watch for Furlanetto and Dima, lol.)

[cahn]

Wowwwwww. That is just... Fritz and Katte :((((((( It sounds very much like Friedrich wasn't actually serious about it and mostly was using it as a cry for attention from his dad. Which clearly backfired MASSIVELY. (added later: lol, I skimmed over the paragraph where you said the exact same thing, but caught it on reread. But wow, it's hard to escape that conclusion! I mean, I can imagine there was other stuff going on as well, but wow. What do you think were the other things going on?)

The arresting official was reported to have been extremely shocked and disappointed that Katte was still there to be arrested three hours later.

:(((((( I wonder, like you, whether maybe he didn't want to leave Fritz to deal with his dad alone?

(also, lol the third conspirator. Personally I am totally with the third conspirator, though mad respect for Katte.)

She records that there were 1,500 such letters... Interesting thought: if Schiller was having his characters play games with letters, he may have based that on this episode.

Holy cow. That's... a lot of letters.

Schiller does more with letters (I think there are three intercepted letters? one may be a message rather than an actual letter, I can't remember? there are a lot of letters and letter-related plot) but Verdi's libretto writers definitely honed it down to a single packet of letters, written by Carlo, that are explicitly treasonous (they have to do with the Matter of Flanders). These are the letters Posa takes and frames himself with in the opera (though in the play Posa writes his own framing treasonous I-am-in-love-with-the-queen letter). I always liked the opera version of the letters better, although I always thought it was a bit odd that Carlo is randomly hanging out writing treasonous letters, especially since it is clearly Posa who is the one who is super invested in Flanders. But if Mery/du Locle (the libretto writers) were thinking about this episode with Fritz and Katte, then it makes perfect sense that Carlo is the one who has these letters (since in "source" Fritz-and-Katte canon they had to do with escaping rather than freeing Flanders (*), and that being the treasonous thing) and that Posa bears the brunt of the contents of them. Wow.

(*) Actually it's escaping at least metaphorically in Schiller and Verdi too, of course -- you probably remember that in that clip Carlo says he wants to escape from the court and be sent to Flanders. To which, of course, Philip responds that he is a crazy idiot.

[cahn]

The speech is much longer in Schiller!

Yeah, I reeeeeally love the singers in that one. Posa is the baritone Simon Keenlyside who I fairly often go off on how much I love his singing and acting :) Philip is the bass Ferruccio Furlanetto whom I also think is totally amazing (though I haven't watched him in as much stuff).

And I forgot to mention, I watched that clip of Friedrich, wow, yeah, that was... rather ineffective-looking :)

What was the result of his experiment??

[mildred_of_midgard]

I can't speak for the singing, but the acting was great, wow both of them. \o/

What was the result of his experiment??

Ahahahaha. About what you'd expect. "Valory was struck by his maniacal coffee drinking. By his own admission he consumed ‘only six or seven cups in the morning now … and after lunch just one pot’. It had not always been so. He once drank forty cups in an attempt to see if he could do without sleep. His body went through such agonies as a result that it was years before he believed he had fully recovered from the experiment."

It's always been one of my favorite anecdotes about him. In fact it was one of the things that made me start crushing on him drew me to him when I was in high school. Anyone who 1) wants to do without sleep because there's too much to do, and 2) doesn't assume normal people's limits apply to himself, is a man after my own heart. I've never touched caffeine because I expect it would go badly, but if I thought there was a chance I could do without sleep and it not be catastrophic, I would be all over it. As it is, I reluctantly do my best to get my eight hours of sleep a night because it gets me the best results. But I always think fondly of young Fritz telling himself, "I know no one in the history of ever has done without sleep, but they just weren't dedicated enough!"

Also, ask me how he took his coffee. :P

Spoiler: in a way that became notorious for its total WTFery. He took it with mustard and peppercorns. All his life.

Because...nobody knows why. Bravado, taste-blindness, and "strong tastes" have all been advanced as possibilities. My own guess, besides bravado (which would be totally in character for both me and him), is that it made the coffee even more effective as a stimulant. If you've been forced to concede a limit on the amount of coffee you can consume, you work around that by making it stronger in other ways, so that you're wide awake at four am to start your jam-packed day of work, concerts, warfare, and more work.

If I were an eighteenth-century monarch that badly needed a therapist, you might see me doing the same.

(That coffee with mustard and peppercorns works like this is an untested hypothesis that shall remain untested, but it makes as much sense to me as anything.)