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

Re: Fredersdorf

[mildred_of_midgard]

I've seen at least two German movies

I'm deeply curious which movies.

as to whether he'd been ready to deal with Fritz' issues?

Oof. Well, my two cents. When you're talking someone who needs therapy, any good relationship can be *therapeutic*. In fact, quality of interpersonal relationships is a major predictive factor for who gets PTSD and who doesn't. I'm pretty sure that Fritz didn't have it *worse* because he had so many people around him validating him (including two who got their influence in before Dad took an interest around age 6). FW, despite having absolute power, was an outlier in terms of his beliefs and abusive practices.

So even though Fritz got very little effective protection, he was constantly getting validation on all sides, as well as mitigation. (The number of anecdotes that can be summarized as: "FW tells X to do this awful thing; X does the bare minimum/obeys in letter more than in spirit/at least apologizes" is astounding. Even Katte's executioner refused FW twice and then was apologetic about it to Katte when FW insisted.)

So any surrogate father figure he could get would be good for him. And we know Fritz would occasionally confide in people about his trauma, e.g. "listener" Catt's memoirs (I see no reason to doubt Catt on this point).

But as for actually engaging head-on like a therapist, a few factors would have to be present.

- Fritz has to believe that a current psychological problem exists.
- He has to believe that it can be solved or at least alleviated.
- He has to believe that someone else has answers that he doesn't, or at least that he might come up with answers by talking to the right person.
- Bach has to know what he's doing, if not to come up with the right answers, then at least to guide Fritz in the right direction.
- They're gonna need more than one session for this. Fritz has the kind of problems that frequently don't get solved over a lifetime of professional therapy.

Now, Fritz knew that his father had left marks on his psyche. Not too long after Küstrin, he wrote, "They have cut deeply into the marble, and that stays for ever." He's not wrong. What he would need would be to recognize that some change is desirable and possible. I'm not sure he ever got there. If nothing else, he was a serious pessimist (again, childhood experiences playing a major role here). But I do think he was intellectually committed enough to the idea of being rational and spent enough time thinking about the interplay of emotions and reason that he *could* get there. (Fritz had the big problem of a lot of committed-to-rationality people, namely that when he's being rational everything's hunky-dory; when he's not, you'll have a hell of a time convincing him he's not.)

Then, he'd have to be willing to at least take some advice from someone else. Hoooo boy. That's where we hit a big sticking point. In that modern AU fic where he gets therapy, 1) it takes him until he's in his 50s, 2) this is a kinder, gentler, more modern Fritz, who's so different he's even capable of walking away from absolute power. It's well written, plausible, and I love it, but it's frankly OOC for historical Fritz.

So, while not knowing enough about Bach's personality to know how much he's qualified to deal with (being a good dad and surrogate dad is a wildly different skill set from being a good therapist)...here's what I think.

Fritz talking about his traumas, sure. Fritz getting validated by Bach, sure. Bach saying helpful things, sure, especially if they agree with what Fritz is already thinking. Bach getting across useful new insights...very, very dicey prospect.

If I had to take a stab at it, I feel like the way to deal with Fritz's issues would be 1) don't argue with him, 2) give him more than 74 years, 3) give him modern psychological literature to read and let him come to his own conclusions. Most of the really good work on the long-lasting effects of child trauma has been done in the last 30 years, and a lot of it has been rooted in evolutionary biology*. Mind you, we're still in the infancy of understanding how to *fix* any of it. But Fritz's mental health, intellect, and determination were robust enough that if he decided something needed to be done, he might be able to figure out a way. The point at which he decided what needed to be done would be the point at which other people could get usefully involved in the process.

* Which also leads me to wonder, is Bach going to be able to have this conversation without references to religion that are going to turn Fritz off? Because, again in our infancy of psychology, a good *rapport* between practitioner and client is a better predictor of success than most things (and if you ask me, that's because most psychotherapy taught and practiced is bunk, and even within the decent schools of thought, which are a minority, most practitioners demonstrably don't know what they're doing).

TL;DR: How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but the light bulb has to want to change.

Re: Fredersdorf

[mildred_of_midgard]

she wrote those memoirs in Bayreuth during her three years enstrangement from Fritz without access to state archives, the way today's memoirists would have

It occurs to me this would have been an excellent time to pull a Posa! "Fritz, for reasons I totally can't explain right now I need all your letters. Tell you when we're both dead."

Re: Fredersdorf

[mildred_of_midgard]

(Heh, good for you, fictional!MariaTheresa.)

Unrelated historical anecdote this reminded me of: Mary, Queen of Scots' mother, Marie de Guise, was in a similar situation once where people wanted her to be Henry VIII's umpteenth wife, and she's supposed to have said something like, "But my neck is so little!"

ETA: I was trying to remember who said sth like, "If I had two heads, I would give one to the King of England," and googling says it was a princess Christina of Denmark.

Re: Fredersdorf

[selenak]

movies: Mein Name ist Bach and an old film version of the novel Friedemann Bach; which is really about Friedemann but does feature the sequence where Bach père visits the Prussian court and offers some impromptu understanding chat when asked. "Mein Name ist Bach" is actually on YouTube in its entirety with English subtitles, here. cahn, the sister featured in this movie, Amalie, is the youngest (belongs in the age group of Heinrich, was basically a baby when the Katte drama went down).

Re: historical likelihood of therapy, I agree with you, and given the importance his faith had for Bach, he probably would have said something, which, disaster ensues, etc.

Re: Charlotte and sisters?

[selenak]

Honestly, I don't know that much more about Charlotte than what is in the memoirs (where yes, Wilhelmine accuses Charlotte of having schemed against her and badmouthed her to Fritz). Whether or not she did, who knows. Wiki says Charlotte, like her siblings, was brainy and a patron of arts and libraries (she financed a good 5000 for the Braunschweig one), but also very... well, when her sons went off to fight for Uncle Fritz in the 7-years-war she told them a variation of the Spartan "come back with your shield or on it", i.e.: "Prove yourself worthy of the House of Hohenzollern or never see me again".

Let me put it this way: her daughter Anna Amalia's principle of education for Carl August seems to have been "how Mom and her siblings grew up? Yeah, I'll do the opposite with my kid".

But yeah, given the sheer number of siblings, the designation „my sister“ in the memoirs is not helpful. Btw, another confusion to avoid later on – „the Empress“ whom Wilhelmine meets isn’t Maria Theresia (whom she also met, but later). Maria Theresia gets referred to as either „the arch duchess“ or „the Queen of Hungary“. Background: remember in Shakespeare’s play Henry V. the long monologue about „The Salic Law“ by the Archbishop of Canterbury early on (to justify Henry invading France)? That. The Salic Law applied to the Holy Roman Empire, which meant no woman on the throne. Now, since the fourteenth century, the Emperor had been exclusively from the House of Habsburg, though technically, Emperors were elected by the German princes. However, Maria Theresia’s dad had no sons, try as he might. That he didn’t really accept this until basically five minutes before his death meant MT hadn’t been prepared for the throne and had to learn on the job. But when he acknowledged at least the possibility there would be no sons, he worked hard to get the other German princes to acknowledge „The Pragmatic Sanction“, which meant Maria Theresia would inherit Austria and assorted territories and her spouse would be elected Holy Roman Emperor. (This meant the Salic Law technically still applied, since it was the spouse who would be Emperor, and Maria Theresia only Empress by marriage, not crowned in her own right.)

Now, when MT’s Dad did die, this at first was ignored by practically everyone. Instead of her husband – Franz Stefan, the Duke of Lorraine, which is why from this point onwards, it’s actually the House of Habsburg-Lorraine -, the German princes voted the Duke of Wittelsbach (ruler of Bavaria) as the next Emperor, and Fritz invaded Silesia to make her on-the-job learning even more joyful. The old fat Empress Wilhelmine mentions near the end of her memoirs this is the lady of Bavaria. After the Duke of Wittelsbach-turned-Emperor, who wasn’t the youngest, died, however, MT had on-the-job-learned, and also, she’d persuaded the Hungarians to crown her Queen despite her being „only“ arch duchess, not Empress. Which meant that this time around, the electors voted for her husband Franz Stefan as Emperor. Behold, Empress-by-marriage Maria Theresia. Fritz still referred to her as „the Queen of Hungary“ only, which is why Wilhelmine does, too. (Though she did meet her.)

(Who did the ruling, which was never a question. Franz Stefan was that rarity of a male 18th century and later spouse who did not object to this. He also had a talent for spotting economic advantages and focused on large scale cloth manufacturing.)

Re: Charlotte and sisters?

[selenak]

A kindness of sisters:

Friederike Luise. Had porphyria (like nephew George III, possibly). Had an awful marriage.

Philippine Charlotte>. Charlotte, see above. The marriage was mostly okay. (Her husband, btw, was the brother of Elisabeth Christine, aka Fritz' not-even-a-beard wife.)

Sophia Dorothea (the 3rd). Had an awful husband and inherited Dad's propensity for congestive heart failure. Was supposed to be the least smart of all the Hohenzollern kids.

Luise Ulrike. Married Swedish royalty and was the mother of Gustav III., of Verdi opera fame (where he moonlights as a Puritan governor of Massachusetts). Again, brainy, patron of the arts, but also really really into Dad’s army. She was FW’s favorite daughter and her mother’s favorite daughter as well, or at least the one Sophia Dorothea said she’d never been able to say no to. Was also really into absolute monarchy and not keen on reforms, a central figure behind various attempts to make Sweden more absolutely monarchical, as it were.

Amalie. Didn't marry at all. Did supposedly have a passionate love affair with one Baron of Trenck, though it can’t be proven. (This was dicy because not only was he her brother’s sidekick but he had a high ranking cousin in the Austrian court.) Was mainly into music, composed as Fritz and Wilhelmine did. Was the one of the siblings looking most like Fritz physically according to their contemporaries.

Re: Fredersdorf

[selenak]

LOL. Shame Fritz was far more paranoid than Carlos and would not have gone for it. :)

Re: Carl August, Master of Chill

[selenak]

Voila: https://www.mail-order-kaiser.de/crossProduct/Duell-in-Sanssouci-Voltaire-und-Friedrich-der-Grosse-im-Briefwechsel-CD

One more Carl August tale for you, then, or rather, a quote from old Goethe about him to Eckermann, his secretary. (Who like Henri de Catt wrote memoirs.) (Bear in mind Goethe is also being discreet. No stories about foursomes to Eckermann.)

"He was eighteen when I came to Weimar, but his buds already showed what the later tree wold be like. He became intensely close to me, and was interested in all I did, which built our relationship. He sat entire evenings with me in deep conversations on topics of nature and art and other good things. We often were up till late in the night, and it wasn't unusual to fall asleep together on my couch. Fifty years we've been together now, and it it wouldn't be surprising if we've achieved something in all this time. It was like a good vintage when it still was fermenting. We rode on parforce horses over hedges, ditches and through rivers, exhausted ourselves up and down mountains, camped outside under the sky, or next to a fireplace in the woods; that was what he loved to do."

Re: Fredersdorf

[mildred_of_midgard]

Oh, he would NEVER have gone for it. I just think it's hilarious to imagine.

Re: Charlotte and sisters?

[mildred_of_midgard]

I'm surprised it took us one of this long to cover the Pragmatic Sanction!

A couple small supplements for cahn:

Had porphyria (like nephew George III, possibly).

Had porphyria (like dad FW, probably).

Had porphyria (like brother Fritz, possibly).

It is a genetic condition.

(Her husband, btw, was the brother of Elisabeth Christine, aka Fritz' not-even-a-beard wife.)

Likewise, unfavorite brother of Fritz, favorite son of FW, and father of FW 2, Augustus Wilhelm, was married to a sister of Fritz's not-even-a-beard wife. So 3 of the Hohenzollern siblings married 3 of the Brunswick siblings, instead of, as Mom wanted, the Hanover siblings.

Philippine Charlotte was married off by FW at around the same time he was marrying Fritz to EC and Wilhelmine to the Margrave of Bayreuth. Augustus Wilhelm was married off ten years later at Fritz's behest, shortly after he became king and no longer had to even pretend to be trying to impregnate his not-even-a-beard wife, as a political concession to make her family, the Brunswicks, less upset at how completely he was setting aside his wife (initially in favor of his mother, eventually in favor of his dogs, the marquises de Pompadour ;) ). Especially after he'd been using EC to get her family to help cover his book, art, and music expenses while Crown Prince. Fritz's idea of a solution: not, "maybe I could be nice to my wife," but "my brother can have sex with his wife, since he's so good at that." (Fritz, remember, after losing a battle, engaged in his usual "well, it wasn't MY fault" scapegoating practice by telling Augustus Wilhelm he sucked so much as a general he could go focus on the heir-begetting part and leave the war to Fritz and Heinrich. AW is devastated, dies, Heinrich holds a grudge forever, builds that obelisk as soon as Fritz dies. <-- An unkindness of brothers.)

Huh. If the English double marriage project had gone through, would Fritz have had to (try to) get his wife's sister Caroline married off to AW? Hadn't thought of that. As discussed, I think he might have been less blatantly dismissive of Amelia than EC, but he still wouldn't have been fathering heirs on her, and he might have been worried about her tattling (and that's a much more powerful family to piss off).

Re: Carl August, Master of Chill

[mildred_of_midgard]

Well, obviously you are not supposed to have a life of your own, your only function is clearly to supply me with historical anecdotes!! /channeling Fritz

LOL, good job! A++++ impersonation, would mistake you for Fritz again.

[selenak]

And don't even get him started on the whole beer-drinking, sausage-eating, German-speaking, Protestant prince the Nazis made him into!

Here I have to protest on behalf on what little honor Nazi propaganda movie makers have, because their Fritz as played by Otto Gebühr does not consume a single sausage, nor does he drink beer. The reason is obvious and has nothing to do with historical authenticity. Hitler was a vegetarian and officially didn't drink alcohol, either. (Unofficially, I think he did when the Nazis were still a rising party and consuming beer was the done thing to be one with the people, etc., but not after, as far as propaganda was concerned.) And since the whole point of those movies was to tell the population AH was Fridericus Redivivus: no sausage for Gebühr!Fritzi. (Don't forget, Hitler fancied himself a patron of the arts and stiffled artist, too, with the academy in Vienna who wouldn't have him standing in for FW in his mind.)

All of which goes to say: one thing I'm missing in your rant-by-Fritz is that he would suspect this whole Nazi appropriation of him is one last Austrian revenge act, because Hitler was Austrian, after all, and didn't the Austrians manage to put the blame for the Nazis entirely on Prussia/Germany while styling themselves "the first victim of Nazi aggression", complete with Hollywood movie?

All kidding aside, if you want a flavor of the full vileness of their version of Fritz, YouTube has the clip from Der große König where Friedrich is arguing with Heinrich after Kunersdorf. Heinrich wants to sue for peace. Friedrich says never and then goes on into a rant on how the Habsburgs have lost all claim to lead Germans because in "their many blooded empire" they treat people of "foreign blood" the same as their German subjects. Etc. I.e. Nazi racism literally put into the mouth of a historical figure who had his own -isms, sure, but never that one.

Re: Fredersdorf

[mildred_of_midgard]

"Mein Name ist Bach" is actually on YouTube in its entirety with English subtitles, here.

Haha, I managed to completely forget you said this after reading and replying to a bunch of comments, then found it myself anyway and was about to link cahn to it, when I saw you already had!

Cahn, per my usual MO of only being able to consume audiovisual media at a rate of 5 minutes every few days, I'm only a few minutes in, BUT, so far I love that we've only seen Fritz say a few sentences, and he's already managed to be dictatorial, parsimonious, and misogynistic*. Best part, the acting in this scene is coming across to me as "This is Fritz in a *good* mood!"

Fun times. :D

(I'm also finding the actor rather more physically attractive than I imagine Fritz in my head, but not so much that I have any complaints. :P In fact, I can feel my mental picture shifting, because this is too good to pass up. And yes, I have complained, vociferously, about attractiveness upgrades in other films/shows.)

* He also, accurately, doesn't respect doctors, but, like, it's the 18th century and they're cupping him, and I'm with him on that.

Mein Name ist Bach

[selenak]

I never got the allure of cupping, either.

Now I hadn't watched Mein Name ist Bach since the original release, so I rewatched it last night to refresh my memory, and was amused how heavily it leans into the jerkass woobie interpretation of Fritz, including him making his servant roleplay himself and Katte in the middle of the night which the servant knows is a terrible idea that won't help Fritz and will only make him more upset, as per usual, but does anyway. (Otoh, the jerkass side also gets ample display, starting with his introduction. It's definitely played as "abusive survivor of abuse", though.)

Re: Mein Name ist Bach

[mildred_of_midgard]

Oh, that does sound like a terrible idea. *facepalm* It also sounds like a very plausible idea from the guy who made his BROTHER roleplay him IN REAL LIFE.

cahn, I don't know if we mentioned this part, but when Fritz was going "You be me and I'll be Dad" to Heinrich and forcing his homosexual brother to get married in return for his freedom/better treatment, he had also recently given his palace at Rheinsberg to Heinrich. RHEINSBERG. The same palace Fritz moved to in the 1730s to lick his wounds after his forced marriage. (I'm not aware that he specifically forced Heinrich to move to Rheinsberg after getting married, but you can see the roleplay in progress.)

For this reason, today you can go view a statue of Crown Prince Friedrich in front of the palace, because he described it as the happiest period of his life, and a few minutes' walk away, also the giant FUCK YOU obelisk from Heinrich, because compulsory roleplay. (Heinrich's also buried here.)

Otoh, the jerkass side also gets ample display, starting with his introduction.
Yeah, even the first few minutes made it clear to me this movie was not going to glamorize away the jerkass parts.

Re: Mein Name ist Bach

[mildred_of_midgard]

Incidentally, there are roleplay scenarios I could imagine* being useful to Fritz, at a very advanced stage of therapy, if handled with *extreme* caution, in a controlled environment, if the planets aligned such that both therapist and Fritz agreed it would be useful and that Fritz was ready. BUT, neither Heinrich nor servant roleplay is that!

* And by "could imagine" I mean "have imagined, in one of my many modern AUs where he gets professional help." *cough*

I'm much more sympathetic to the fictional servant compulsory roleplay, though--it's a bad idea in an uncontrolled environment, but I can understand the urge, and in the life of someone who wasn't Fritz, or even Fritz-without-absolute-power, might actually have helped.

Re: Charlotte and sisters?

[selenak]

I would say "poor Caroline" in that AU where she has to marry into the Hohenzollern, but then I remembered what her own family was like. Though they seem to have adored her. Also, can you imagine how someone famed as a female truth-to-power teller would have fared anywhere near Fritz, especially if he's awful to her husband?

Re: Fredersdorf

[cahn]

Hee. I like knowing that even back then people realized how WTF that whole thing was :P :)

Re: Fredersdorf

[cahn]

Thank you! :D This will take me a while (I have to finish a couple of other TV things first) but I am excited for it :D At the very least I expect the music to be excellent :P :)

Re: Mein Name ist Bach

[cahn]

ha!
I would call that less "roleplaying" than "heh heh now I get to be the complete jerk who gives abusive orders around here!!"

Re: Charlotte and sisters?

[cahn]

Ah, excellent, thanks. Really the question I was asking was "how did Carl August turn out so well," which you have answered :) (And... a great deal of my childrearing philosophy does in fact turn on that same principle, so I feel for Anna Amalia!) Well, that and "was that actually Charlotte she was talking about, and was Charlotte actually that awful." :)

Holy cow, I hadn't realized that Maria Theresia's ascension, er, took quite so long -- thank you for this, this is fascinating. And I would never have figured out that "the Queen of Hungary" referred to her, so I'm glad you clarified that :)

(Also, yay Franz Stefan!!)

Re: Charlotte and sisters?

[cahn]

Thank you, and hee, I was unaware when getting into Verdi that it would have so many connections to Prussian royalty :P

Re: Charlotte and sisters?

[cahn]

Friiiiiiitz! :P

Re: Carl August, Master of Chill

[cahn]

Holy cow, I see what you mean about the slash potential! (And even without looking at it through a fandom-slash lens, that's just a really sweet quote <3 )

[cahn]

...okay, wow, I am sort of dying here that a) Nazis were actually just as bad as we always think they are, but b) not in exactly the way that I/mildred had imagined, but c) only so they could make movie!Fritz be more like Hitler, and most of all d) Fritz' paranoid self turning it into an Austrian conspiracy. Friiiiiiiitz!