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Opera for Beginners (Part 3 of 3)
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) --![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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)
-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)
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You will never catch me being anything but a live dog, but I love me some dead lions in history and fiction. <3
:(((((( I wonder, like you, whether maybe he didn't want to leave Fritz to deal with his dad alone?
I am surprised more authors haven't proposed this. I've only found one so far. (Admittedly, I'm limited to English sources plus online German sources that can be put through Google Translate. But all the major English sources are working from German sources, so...)
But then I'm finding that biographers tend to be critical of Katte in general, at times when I feel like they should be more critical of their sources. Two of our main primary sources for Katte were people who specifically didn't like him or his influence on Friedrich. Emphasis on how bad-looking he is, for instance, in a way that seems far from dispassionate. So modern sources will just refer to him as a "libertine" or "a bad influence" and I'm like...but what does that mean? Because if you mean gay and atheist, then that's very different than if you mean, say, "squandering his inheritance on gambling" or "disappearing into brothels with total abandon." But no one is ever specific. It makes me very suspicious.
He also gets cast as silly, vain, and ambitious, again based on what I think is inadequate evidence. So for example, it seems that when he and Fritz were BFFs, he ran around name-dropping and telling everyone with great excitement that the Crown Prince confided in him. Our contemporary sources report this with great disapproval. And yeah, he clearly contributed to the vast numbers of people who knew about the fatal escape attempt, and that was not the most street-smart thing to do. And sure, courtiers letting royal favor go to their heads is a thing.
But when our same contemporary sources say that the Prince was carrying on about Katte like a lover with his mistress, and an older, sadder, and wiser Katte at his trial is confessing that he let ambition go to his head...I have another possible interpretation for "Fritz is going on about Katte all the time because he's totally besotted, and Katte is going on about Fritz all the time because he's ambitious." If you look at their actions, they were both doing the exact same thing. Katte painting a miniature of Fritz and carrying it around with him until he died, and not being able to get through a conversation without mentioning how excited he is about him...is consistent with the same infatuation that we attribute to Fritz's behavior! NO ONE (that I have seen) has put this idea forward. It's not necessarily better supported by the evidence than the ambition theory, but ambition doesn't explain being willing to go into exile and willing to stick around and face the music together, either. Nor does spending the last few moments of your life trying to make your prince feel better.
So let's think for about two seconds why Katte may have been casting his actions in the light of ambition at a court martial on which he was on trial for his life, in a place and time where sodomy was punishable by death, oh right because maybe he didn't want to admit he was head over heels in love, right. Also the part where he couldn't exactly say, "I felt sorry for the abusive situation my boyfriend was stuck in and sympathetic to his desires to get the hell out of there." Even the horse's mouth is not a reliable source under these circumstances, is what I'm saying!
So while I realize this is fanon, I do think it's at least plausible that Katte was indecisive about whether it was worth the risk of standing by Fritz, as opposed to the motive that's given in the primary source we have and sometimes blindly repeated by moderns: namely that he wasn't going to flee until his fancy French saddle was done being made, because if you're fleeing for your life, you have to do it in style at all costs. Which makes him look irredeemably stupid. (I do think if there's any truth to this story, it was probably indecisive procrastination. But some authors at least have the decency to speculate that maybe he was busy destroying the evidence instead.)
ETA: I'm not saying no one has ever suggested Katte genuinely loved Fritz. Plenty of people assume that and have positive things to say about his love, loyalty, and courage. It's just that the "and also motivated by ambition" tends to be repeated blindly in ways that I think are just too uncritical.
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?
Haha, well, this is going to have to wait, because I have a looooot of opinions about psychology and trauma in general and Fritz's psychology specifically (which are part fanon, part headcanon), and it's almost midnight here and I must go to bed. But rest assured, my opinions will be expressed in great detail at some point, probably soon. :P
Also, RIP Fritz, d. August 17, 1786, age 74. I'm sorry you never got that therapist and ended up perpetuating the cycle of trauma on others instead. I think you would have turned out a lot more like (a much more musically talented) me in my shoes. (And yeah, a huge part of my fascination and sympathy with him more than with his victims is a strong "There but for the grace of not being born in the eighteenth century to an abusive militaristic father with a big army and then given absolute power go I" feeling.)