(no subject)
Aug. 20th, 2019 09:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnThis is totally too good to keep to myself: on my "I showed my family opera clips" post, mildred_of_midgard and selenak are talking about Frederick the Great (by way of Don Carlo, of course) and it is like this amazing virtuoso spontaneous thing and whoa
Things I knew about Frederick the Great before a year ago: he was king of... Prussia??
Additional things I knew about Frederick the Great before the last couple of days:selenak informed me last year that he and his dad may well have been at least somewhat the inspiration for Schiller's Don Carlos, and everything that goes with that: his dad (Friedrich Wilhelm, henceforth FW) was majorly awful, he had a boyfriend (Katte) who was horribly killed by his dad
Only a partial list of the additional things I now know about Frederick the Great (henceforth "Fritz") and associated historical figures due to mildred and selenak:
-Fritz and Katte's escape plan (which resulted in Katte's execution) was... really, really boneheaded. As boneheaded as opera plots! :P
-Katte was in the process of destroying 1,500 letters when he got caught (! puts all those letters in Don Carlos into perspective) (ETA: but also see mildred's comment below)
-Fritz wrote opera libretti and so did his sister
-Fritz decided to use himself as an experimental test subject to see if it was entirely possible to do without sleep via the application of coffee WITH PEPPERCORNS AND MUSTARD
-Fritz wrote a poem about orgasm that also reads as if he's never actually, like, had sex (although that was not in this post, it was in the comments to this one)
-FW apparently beat up George II when they were kids
-I am totally not even going to try to summarize the discussion about FW's "rationalized sadism" and sexual hangups and the reeeeeally bizarre Dresden interlude (go down a couple of comments for the really insane stuff)
-Fritz' sister Wilhemina wrote tell-all memoirs about her totally insane family which I am SUPER going to read now, watch this space
Also, there is apparently some subplot involving Russian fanboys that introduces an entirely new cast of people which I am dying to find out about
mildred_of_midgard and selenak are talking about Frederick the Great (by way of Don Carlo, of course) and it is like this amazing virtuoso spontaneous thing and whoaThings I knew about Frederick the Great before a year ago: he was king of... Prussia??
Additional things I knew about Frederick the Great before the last couple of days:
selenak informed me last year that he and his dad may well have been at least somewhat the inspiration for Schiller's Don Carlos, and everything that goes with that: his dad (Friedrich Wilhelm, henceforth FW) was majorly awful, he had a boyfriend (Katte) who was horribly killed by his dadOnly a partial list of the additional things I now know about Frederick the Great (henceforth "Fritz") and associated historical figures due to mildred and selenak:
-Fritz and Katte's escape plan (which resulted in Katte's execution) was... really, really boneheaded. As boneheaded as opera plots! :P
-Katte was in the process of destroying 1,500 letters when he got caught (! puts all those letters in Don Carlos into perspective) (ETA: but also see mildred's comment below)
-Fritz wrote opera libretti and so did his sister
-Fritz decided to use himself as an experimental test subject to see if it was entirely possible to do without sleep via the application of coffee WITH PEPPERCORNS AND MUSTARD
-Fritz wrote a poem about orgasm that also reads as if he's never actually, like, had sex (although that was not in this post, it was in the comments to this one)
-FW apparently beat up George II when they were kids
-I am totally not even going to try to summarize the discussion about FW's "rationalized sadism" and sexual hangups and the reeeeeally bizarre Dresden interlude (go down a couple of comments for the really insane stuff)
-Fritz' sister Wilhemina wrote tell-all memoirs about her totally insane family which I am SUPER going to read now, watch this space
Also, there is apparently some subplot involving Russian fanboys that introduces an entirely new cast of people which I am dying to find out about
Re: The anecdotes, they never stop
Date: 2019-08-21 05:36 am (UTC)VOLTAIRE: Shakespeare has often two good lines, never six. A madman, by G-d, a buffoon at Bartholommew Fair. No play of his own, all old stories.
Chess. “I shall lose, by G-d, by all the saints in Paradise. Ah, here I am risind on a black ram, like a whore as I am. –
Falstaff from the Spaniards.
BOSWELL: I’ll tell you why we admire Shakespeare.
VOLTAIRE: Because you have no taste.
BOSWELL: But, Sir –
VOLTAIRE: Et penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos – all Europe is against you. So you are wrong.
BOSWELL: But this is because we have the most grand imagination.
VOLTAIRE: The most wild.
(…)
BOSWELL: What do you think of our comedy?
VOLTAIRE: A great deal of wit, a great deal of plot, and a great deal of bawdy-houses. (…)
BOSWELL: Johnson is a most orthodox man, but very learned; has much genius and much worth.
VOLTAIRE: He is then a dog. A superstitious dog. No worthy man was ever superstitious.
BOSWELL: He said the King of Prussia wrote like your footboy.
VOLTAIRE. He is a sensible man.
Re: The anecdotes, they never stop
Date: 2019-08-21 05:40 am (UTC)Re: The anecdotes, they never stop
Date: 2019-08-21 06:03 am (UTC)Re: The anecdotes, they never stop
Date: 2019-08-21 09:20 am (UTC)Re: The anecdotes, they never stop
Date: 2019-08-22 02:36 am (UTC)