Frederick the Great post links

[cahn]

More Frederick the Great (henceforth "Fritz") and surrounding spinoffs history! Clearly my purpose in life is now revealed: it is to encourage mildred_of_midgard and selenak to talk to me about Frederick the Great and associated/tangential European history. I am having such a great time here! Collating some links in this post:

* selenak's post on Frederick the Great as a TV show with associated fandom; a great place to start for the general history

* I have given up indexing all posts, here is the tag of discussion posts. Someday when I actually have time maybe I'll do a "best of."


Some links that have come up in the course of this discussion (and which I am putting here partially for my own benefit because in particular I haven't had time to watch the movies because still mainlining Nirvana in Fire):
Fritz' sister Wilhelmine's tell-all tabloidy memoirs (English translation); this is Part I; the text options have been imperfectly OCR'd so be aware of that (NOTE 11-6-19: THIS IS A BOWDLERIZED TEXT, I WILL COME BACK WITH A BETTER LINK)
Part II of Wilhelmine's memoirs (English translation)
A dramatization of Frederick the Great's story, English subtitles
Mein Name ist Bach, Movie of Frederick the Great and J.S. Bach, with subtitles Some discussion of the subtitles in the thread here (also scroll down)
2017 miniseries about Maria Theresia, with subtitles and better translation of one scene in comments

ETA:
Miniseries of Peter the Great, IN ENGLISH, apparently reasonably historically solid
ETA 10-22-19
Website with letters from and to Wilhelmine during her 1754/1755 journey through France and Italy, as well as a few letters about Wilhelmine, in the original French, in a German translation, and in facsimile
University of Trier site where the full works of Friedrich in the original French and German have been transcribed, digitized, and uploaded:
30 volumes of writings and personal correspondence
46 volumes of political correspondence
Fritz and Wilhelmine's correspondence (vol 27_1)
ETA 10-28-19
Der Thronfolger (German, no subtitles; explanation of action in the comment here)
ETA 11-6-19
Memoirs of Stanisław August Poniatowski, dual Polish and French translation
ETA 1-14-20
Our Royal Librarian Mildred has collated some documentation, including google translate versions of the Trier letters above (see the "Correspondence" folder)!

Comments

Re: Yuletide ideas and the Other Royal Murder Dad

[selenak]

That book is golden with stories about Fritz micromanaging his musicians, including, btw, also female sopranos, not just the castrati. The female lead soprano at the Berlin opera he was particularly involved (and surprisingly complimentary about in general) with; in addition to being a good singer, she also had an abusive dad, so there might have been additional sympathy on that count. All singers, including the great Salimbene (who was one of the legendary castrati on a European level), however, had to endure getting lectured by Fritz.

As for Quantz: when he was about to visit Bayreuth Fritz wrote to Wilihelmine not to give him more than what Fritz gave him per appearance for otherwise he might demand a salary raise upon his return to Berlin, so Fritz' introduction scene in Mein Name ist Bach where he refuses to pay for an uncommissioned composition by Emmanuel Bach was dead on the money at least, no pun intended. :) But yes, fictional Quantz saying "he could be your father" re: J.S. Bach was a line just there get the audience to see Fritz' reaction and introduce Fritz' Dad issues early on in the movie, i.e. exposition duty over historical likelihood for Quantz of all the people to have said it. Otoh, who else would say it? The rest of the people in the scene are all younger than Fritz and utterly dependent on him. You have to consider that the film makers couldn't assume their audience would know all about Fritz' background already going in. This is a Swiss-German movie produced for an international audience who may know who Bach was but might or might not be aware Frederick the Great was his contemporary at best, so they had to include exposition somehow.

Back to the book about Fritz as a musician I've just read: also includes analyses of his operas - Coriolano (same myth Shakespeare's play is based on, worthy of note that you get one of the most famous disapproving mother, not father figures here, and the son eventually decides to listen to his mother knowing full well he'll die for it), Silla (good old Lucius Cornelius Sulla, here a misunderstood good dictator sorting everyone's miseries out despite being maligned as an evil tyrant by some of the cast, and and the end retiring as the Republic can now fend for itself) and Montezuma (Fritz strikes a blow for the Aztecs and against bigotted Catholic Spain, ruled, of course, by the Habsburgs at the time the opera is set; the book's author points out that Montezuma, being a good guy, isn't presented as an ideal ruler, either, and that his goodness and passivity allows the evil Habsburgs Spaniards to genocide his country).

The author argues against what some biographers apparantly have claimed - i.e. that Fritz lost interest in opera post 7-years-war - and backs it up with quotes from documents to prove it. Down to him visiting the opera with his last state guest ever in the year of his death. Who was that last guest? Why, none other than great-nephew Carl August from Weimar. She also provides details about the singers, the concerts, the arrangements (down to such details that when Fritz was visiting Bayreuth post-reconciliation with Wilhelmine, she re-arranged the musical presentation of one of her works in his honor in such a way that the style the songs were presented would echo his favourite castrato singer (Salimbene) and composer (Hasse).

Re: Yuletide ideas and the Other Royal Murder Dad

[mildred_of_midgard]

so Fritz' introduction scene in Mein Name ist Bach where he refuses to pay for an uncommissioned composition by Emmanuel Bach was dead on the money at least

Yes, I was impressed at how the intro scene managed to pack so many of Fritz's traits into so few sentences.

But yes, fictional Quantz saying "he could be your father" re: J.S. Bach was a line just there get the audience to see Fritz' reaction and introduce Fritz' Dad issues early on in the movie, i.e. exposition duty over historical likelihood for Quantz of all the people to have said it.

Oh, I get *why* they did it! I made the same choice to put my exposition in Algarotti's mouth in my latest fic (which cahn is kindly currently beta-reading) because he is the most likely character *within the context of the fic* to have said it, though not in real life. (Then I added an author's note at the end apologizing to Algarotti. ;-) ) I was just saying that personally, knowing the closet story, I raised an eyebrow at Quantz.

Thank you for the details from the books you're reading! Between my inability to read German and my current inability to read physical books, they're very helpful. And sadly, as much as German would be extremely useful to me this month, it's something like 4 or 5 on my list of languages to beef up on, so it's going to be a while. (I wish my PhD program, which theoretically required a reading knowledge of academic German, had either provided the resources to learn to read academic German without having to go through the whole rigmarole of years of learning to speak to Germans about your daily life and ask when the train is coming, or at the very least, held the bar higher: I aced the reading requirements without actually having enough vocabulary to read anything I want to read. I complained about the program expectations at the time.)