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

[cahn]

HOLY COW.
Was she actually his illegitimate daughter and his mistress?!

Who were the six people?

[selenak]

As to the mistress part, I think the historical consensus is "can't be proven one way or the other". August had up to 200 known illegitimate kids, and she was definitely a favourite, but "having sex with anything that moves" doesn't necessarily translate into "being into incest as well". It certainly was gossip at the time, hence Wilhelmine mentioning it casually. At any rate, she was an interesting character; wiki sums up why here. (An entry which also illustrates why a gay boy still uncertain about his sexuality might have been drawn to her. He retained good memories and wrote to Voltaire decades later: "In my tenderest youth, she inspired two passions in me - you may have guessed, it was love and poetry. This little Miracle of nature, equipped with all the charms, had taste and tendresse and tried to share both with me. I succeeded with the lovemaking, but not so much with the poetry." (Disclaimer: it's always possible he was het-posing for Voltaire, of course, but given how insulting he could be about most people, especially women, this is still a remarkable Quote imo.)

The six: over to Mildred of Midgard.

[mildred_of_midgard]

So! The six people is an interesting list. It never made any sense to me until I went and read the original letter. It's not a list of the six people Frederick the Great loved most over the course of his life, as it's usually presented. It's a list of men living and serving in 1741 (i.e., not even halfway through his life, though I feel like the list is front-loaded in any case, so that may not matter too much) whose services he was recommending to his brother and heir presumptive in case he died in battle, and about whom he added the note "whom I have loved the most in my life". That explains why, for instance, Wilhelmine doesn't make the top six.

For this reason, the names won't mean anything to you, Cahn, but they're Keyserlingk, Jordan, Wartensleben, Hacke, Fredersdorf, & Eichel. (Funnily enough, I had the letter in question in my Chrome bookmarks, so I was able to pull it right up.)

Disclaimer: it's always possible he was het-posing for Voltaire, of course, but given how insulting he could be about most people, especially women, this is still a remarkable Quote imo.

Remarkable, but not totally out of character. Friedrich, in between vast amounts of misogyny, did sprinkle in some complimentary words about individual women (including ones he wasn't related to) with whom he had good relationships.

Of course, het-posing was also a thing that I'm pretty sure he did from time to time. Especially regarding his wife while his father was alive. It all makes it super hard to tell what's real and what's not.

My own guess is that he experimented with women when he was younger, possibly including the Countess, and decided against. Of course, he may have done the same with men and just taken longer to decide he was homoromantic and asexual. I am agnostic on whether his marriage was ever consummated. My guess is no, but I have low confidence in that guess. Pretty high confidence that EC would not have told on him, though, which makes it more plausible.

[cahn]

You are both amazing and all this is amazing.

And yes, mildred, you have correctly intuited that the names mean nothing to me; I was wondering things like "are there any family members on this list," "are there any women on this list," etc. So this answers my question quite well :)

[mildred_of_midgard]

Yep, those were exactly my questions when I first learned of the existence of this list of six.

If it were a list from the set of everyone, in service and not, living and dead, male and female, that he loved during his entire life, I personally would fully expect Sophia Dorothea and Wilhelmine to be on the list. Possibly Katte--Fritz virtually never *talks* about Katte, which makes it hard to know where he stood other than "deeply traumatized." He loved him a lot and always remembered him with love and pain. Still top six in 1786? That I don't know.

Other than that, Fredersdorf? Algarotti? Is Catt on the list? Anyone else from the existing list of six in the letter? Don't know. Definitely some dogs, though. <3 (11 buried beside him.) And he did have a nephew who died young (smallpox) whom he is said to have loved very much. All I have are guesses, and there are other plausible candidates I haven't named. (ETA: Marischal! I knew I was forgetting a major candidate.)

But Voltaire without doubt is #1 frenemy. :P

[mildred_of_midgard]

The six: over to Mildred of Midgard.

Also, I'm just chortling here at how you *knew* I'd be on top of this one.

[selenak]

I couldn't imagine you not having found the other five and the circumstances in which they were named, because "loved best" is such a huge claim.

[mildred_of_midgard]

Right? I had the exact same reaction Cahn did. I think we all did, more or less.

[selenak]

Oh, and I have something operatic for you. Like her brother, Wilhelmine also composed. In her opera Argenore, there is a significant difference between the print Version and the autograph version written in Wilhelmine's hand of the aria which Ormondo, unjustly condemned to execution, sings. This opera was first produced by her (in Bayreuth, the principality she'd married into) in 1740, i.e. exactly ten years after Katte's death, and here's what Ormondo sings in her handwritten Version: "I will fall, but you/cruel tyrant/will at the end repent too late/and you will say that my life/is admired instead of a pitied/ A test to the strong soul/calm and steadfast/enduring unfair punishment/for a guilt of which one is innocent." In the recitative before the aria, Ormondo sings: "That I don't want to die now isn't because of cowardice, but because I hope to see the ending of a despotic, cruel and thankless King".

(The printed Version of Argenore has the aria in question with a completely different text: "I fall, but I am like the high and proud oak, moving all the earth around it when it falls" etc.)

The aria in Question.

[cahn]

Wow, that is... something. Ouch. And, ahahahaha, the censors got to it?

[selenak]

Or maybe her husband. The opera also contained her venting about his mistress in very thin fictional disguise.