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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
Nancy Mitford I
Date: 2019-08-22 04:58 am (UTC)Saxe-Coburg-GothasWindsors. Her father had a lot in common with FW as a parent, while Nancy, the oldest Mitford sister, as a sibling had more than a few things in common with Fritz. (Though with better reason. I mean, denouncing your sister as a traitor and ensuring she remains locked up for the the remainder of WWII is unsisterly, but if your sister Diana happens to be married to Fascist leader Oswald Mosley and has had Hitler as a wedding guest, it's not, err, unprovoked.) Another thing Nancy shared with Fritz was Francophilia - she moved to Paris permanently early on - and corresponding with one of the most praised Writers of the day (Evelyn Waugh) who clearly thinks himself her superior but yet can't resist exchanging barbed one liners.The most famous of the Mitford Sisters:
Nancy the novelist (and occasional biographer)
Diana, first a famous Society Beauty, then a famous Fascist
Unity, an even more famous Fascist due to being so much of a Hitler fangirl that she stalked him in Munich until being admitted to his inner circle; she tried to commit suicide by shooting herself in the head when WWII started, survived that, was brought back to England in a coma and lived for a few more years until she died
Jessica ("Decca") the communist and heroic anti-Fascist freedom fighter in Spain who later moved to the US and promptly ran into Trouble with McCarthyism as she remained an social activist all her life
Re: Nancy Mitford I
Date: 2019-08-22 05:02 am (UTC)I almost said something about her over-identifying with Fritz, and then realized I'd have to talk about my repeated comments about over-identifying with Fritz EXCEPT DIFFERENTLY, and then deleted that paragraph.
Re: Nancy Mitford I
Date: 2019-08-22 05:14 am (UTC)While the course is in progress, witty individuals will be allowed to engage in censored written correspondence, to be viewed by people who will find the contents entertaining rather than rage-inducing.
Re: Nancy Mitford I
Date: 2019-08-22 05:38 am (UTC)