Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 19

[cahn]

Yuletide nominations:

18th Century CE Federician RPF
Maria Theresia | Maria Theresa of Austria
Voltaire
Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great
Ernst Ahasverus von Lehndorff
Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen | Henry of Prussia (1726-1802)
Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia (1709-1758)
Anna Amalie von Preußen | Anna Amalia of Prussia (1723-1787)
Catherine II of Russia
Hans Hermann von Katte
Peter Karl Christoph von Keith
Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf
August Wilhelm von Preußen | Augustus William of Prussia (1722-1758)

Circle of Voltaire RPF
Emilie du Chatelet
Jeanne Antoinette Poisson (Madame de Pompadour)
John Hervey (1696-1743)
Marie Louise Mignot Denis
Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu
Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis
Armand de Vignerot du Plessis de Richelieu (1696-1788)
Francesco Algarotti

Comments

Friedrich: Triumph und Tragödie

[selenak]

Thanks to prinzsorgenfrei, I watched the musical Friedrich: Mythos und Tragödie, of which I previously knew some of the songs - the ones which are up at YouTube - but not all, and had read a summary in German.

So, impressions: first of all, the summary had left me with the idea that it was two thirds Crown Prince Fritz, one third Old Fritz. Which technically is true, but because Old Fritz is so often on stage, due to the framing narration, he's as much a presence in the story as Crown Prince Fritz. (Which is a plus in my book, btw: both because it's somewhat cheating if you want to do something about Frederick the Great and emphasize the young prince over the monarch, thereby saving yourself the ambiguity, and because Chris Murray (Old Fritz), at least in this performance, is a better actor and singer than Tobias Bieri (Crown Prince Fritz.)

Secondly, and unsurprising, since I had seen the excerpts and read the summary: Hamilton, this is not, neither in terms of the music or the lyrics/dialogue (i.e. in terms of "how to put on a personal and political 18th century story into a two plus hours musical). Songs and script are on a workman level. This said, the script does try something ambitious - antihero as central character, avoiding the easy solution of limiting themselves to young Fritz and ending with his ascension to the throne and/or Silesia 1 - , and despite the obvious and necessary cutting down of the rl cast to just a few characters and the gratitious het (I'll get to that), a few actual historical details ended up in it I hadn't expected to see, such as FW pressing Fritz to renounce his place in the succession (we don't see any of the non-Wilhelmine siblings on stage, and this is indeed the only indirect acknowledgement of their, or rather of AW's existence) and Fritz' reply, some fragmentary quotes from his letters to Wilhelmine from Küstrin worked into the fictional letter adressed to Katte from Küstrin, Fritz dissolving the Potsdam Giants as a money saving gesture, or the way the argument with Wilhelmine (which for my money is one of the three best musical numbers, along with Ebenbild and the early Fritz/Wilhelmine duet) works in some actual Fritz-and-siblings (not just Wilhelmine) arguments from rl. And they do try to explain why Grumbkow & Seckendorff were against the English marriages, though this brings me to the gratitious het.

Like I told you after reading the summary, it's not just the Katte/Wilhelmine but also Grumbkow/SD (which certainly must be the winner over least likely pairing of a Frederician story); here, Grumbkow fools SD into thinking he's on her side while really scheming against the English marriages. He's also there to pick up the letter in which Fritz reveals all about the Katte connection of his escape which Wilhelmine and SD inexplicably dropped and are leaving behind. I mean, this is far quicker and easier for the audience to understand than how Fritz writing to Katte ended up with the wrong Katte and then with FW, I get it, but given how frantic SD and Wilhelmine were about burning and rewriting letters in rl, it took me out of the mood and made me giggle. The other thing which made me grin regarding our enterprising duo of schemers was that Seckendorff actually gets played with an Austrian accent. Guys, yes, he worked for Team Vienna, but he was actually a Franconian. Quite a different dialect. Oh, and then there's this bit, when newly ascended to the throne Fritz shows his father's council what's what and confronts Seckendorff, who in this version is still Imperial envoy:

Fritz: Is there anyone except for myself in this room whom you (Seckendorff) haven't bribed?

(Historical Seckendorff: Excuse you. I bribed you as well. You took my money gladly. That you didn't deliver was certainly not for lack of spending on my part.)

Other than being fooled by Grumbkow, SD in her few appearances is presented as a tender mother (to both Fritz and Wilhelmine), without a song of her own. She's not much there. FW is his worst self and has to be talked out of executing Fritz by Grumbkow (showing up with the pinched letter that makes Katte the alternate victim). Mind you, given the solid foundation for making him Evil Ogre Dad in this musical, I did not expect anything else. (The complexity comes in by the way the musical makes a big thematic thing out of Fritz, contrary to what FW things, actually sharing traits with him, the more the more time passes, and the song Ebenbild in which he finally faces this and admits FW has won is the emotional climax of the show and the start of his very late liberation.

The equation the show draws isn't particularly new: i.e. his father's brutality culminating in Küstrin created Frederick the Great and his need to compensate with war-won glory and praise while also ensuring life long loneliness, and in terms of history, you can complain about simplification (we talked about this; given the spirit of the age, the existence of the most modern and best drilled army of Europe and the shape of the Prussian territories, even a lightside version of FW as a father would have not made Fritz into a pacifist, and he'd still gone for Silesia, though he might not have been such an attack-attack-attack type of general), but it certainly works as an emotional arc for a musical. By starting with Kunersdorf, then with a time jump into his final years, making Old Fritz confront his life via Ghostly Katte and showing him trying everything to avoid both the memory of the execution specifically or the admission that he did not become what he dreamed of being as a young prince but rather something else, you get a bit of what we call Küchenpsychologie ("kitchen psychology") feeling, but, again: works for a musical.

Ghostly Katte, and Katte in general, I'm in two minds about. The premise itself - Ghost! Katte challenging and making Old Fritz think about his life - is a good idea, though he's a bit too much Fritz' buried conscience and too little a person in his own right for my taste. I also note that in the two full depictions and the one audio depiction of the execution, we get Fritz apologizing and asking for forgiveness, but don't hear Katte's reply. (I'm also nerd enough to complain about his wearing a shirt and his head being covered by a paperback/hood - I mean, after all the trouble we went to accumulating contemporary execution descriptions, it's just a Pavlovian reaction to mutter about this.) This is because Fritz doesn't get forgiven/can't forgive himself until the very end of the musical, I get it, but still - that Katte said it is such an important part of what makes the character in any version.

The other problem with Katte is that partly, though not exclusively due to pairing him up with Wilhelmine romantically and partly due to lacking scenes with Fritz on his lonesome before Fritz springs the "let's escape together" idea on him, the audience just doesn't get a sense of what makes this Katte feel strong enough for Fritz to risk this. I did get the impression the script wanted to have his cake and eat it in terms of Fritz and Katte, i.e., on the one hand, there's the invented romance with Wilhelmine for the no-homo-crowd, on the other, the way Fritz reacts throughout does get across, imo, that he's having feelings for Katte himself. But other than feeling sorry for Fritz because of FW's behavior, I didn't see this musical's Katte being given anything that shows me him having strong emotions about the brother as well as the sister back - right until Fritz begs him to come with him on the escape, and Katte is unable to say no. It's a well played scene, but emotionally, it comes out of nowhere because we did not see this Katte and Fritz develop their friendship, with the musical so set on presenting them and Wihelmine as a trio. (I should add that the Katte/Wilhelmine romance isn't that convincing, either, since it's on a "she's a girl, he's a boy" level, but at least it's there so her being upset that her brother and her boyfriend want to run away and leave her behind to FW's tender mercies does not come out of nowhere.)

Which is to say: you don't even have to ship Fritz/Katte to be dramatically somewhat unsatisfied on the lack of build up for this relationship, which stands in disproportion to what the structure of the musical itself (i.e. the Ghost Katte and Old Fritz confrontations) would have demanded. It's also telling that Fritz and Katte have no duet.

Fritz and Wilhelmine have two, and despite the gratitions Wihelmine/Katte, that makes their relationship the more most successfully depicted in the musical. (Other than Fritz/Power as compensation for Fritz & FW.) I had known the early "We belong together" duet, but not the late one. Now explaining about Marwitz, the Erlangen journalist, and lunch with MT would not have been stage friendly, so the script goes for another element, the (surrounded by pro-MT territories) little Bayreuth wanting to remain neutral (which was a thing, and of course Fritz' assumption that all the principalities his sisters had married into were automatically his subjects subordinate allies was a thing between him and his other brothers-in-law and sisters, too) as the trigger for the argument between Fritz and Wilhelmine when she visits him at some nebulous point in the timeline which is somewhere in the early 1750s (since Voltaire is there, and Sanssouci) but actually incorporates their fallout from the mid 40s) . This is easier to understand for a newbie audience, and also isn't treated as the entire problem but just the thing that lays open the problem. It's a fierce duet with both performers really bringing it, and it culminates with Fritz demanding submission and getting it, and it's absolutely heartbreaking.

Since I mentioned Voltaire: as I expected from having watched Bienvenue in Sanssouci, his number, on YouTube, he's there as the comic relief and played with maximum camp. (Though comic relief or not, this number and the following scene with the table round at Sanssouci do make it clear that the "I'm just a philosopher here and a man of letters" thing is not workable because King Fritz still expects his rules to be obeyed, though funnily the show has Maupertuis, not Voltaire, make the mistake of going against the rules and getting a royal reproof as the result.) There is no mention of the big Fritz/Voltaire implosion and fallout. Mind you, what we get is Katte sarcastically replying to Fritz' boast that he got the idol of his youth to come and join him in Sanssouci with the observation that Fritz is paying Voltaire a large enough salary for this.

(To which the Voltaire in my head said: My good man, you overestimate our boyfriend's generosity and underestimate my business acumen. Let's not forget that this man haggled about my travelling expenses with me. On the other hand, I had decided early in my life that if money without talent is for fools, talent without money is asking for humiliation, and thus ensured I'd be a wealthy man through my own mercenary efforts. Trust me, I made more money due to said efforts than I ever received from my Prussian Alcina. The salary really wasn't what kept me in this mantrap of a country for three nerve-wrecking years.)

The biggest ensemble number is "Sieben Jahre Krieg", which is another "so not Hamilton" moment but here I mean it not in terms of script or musical quality; in terms of how war is depicted in a post WWII German musical versus a American musical. "The World is Upside Down" has very much a "yay us Americans!" vibe, leaving no doubt that the "right" side won. There is no vilification of the British soldiers, no, but that the War of Independence itself was a necessary and good and glorious thing is treated as a given. Meanwhile, "Friedrich: Triumph und Tragödie" has Ghostly Katte dispute Fritz' claim he was forced into this war from the get go and Sieben Jahre Krieg is a complete condemnation of said war (and by implication, all of Fritz' wars), not in a "MT was right" manner but in a "all these people died for his mixture of ego and brokenness" manner, and it leads up to Fritz' big breakdown number "Ebenbild", acknowledging his inner FW.

The award for most cringeworthy lyrics goes to: the Orzelska-seduces-Fritz number in Dresden. (Though I will say that all the praise certainly works with his praise kink. *g*) It's not that the musical tries to make more of the episode than it was - it doesn't - but that writing sexy lyrics that aren't unintentionally funny is hard, and here they missed the mark.

Most bewildering twist from history not already named: FW forced (King August makes him) to leave Fritz and Wilhelmine (who in this version has come along to Dresden as well) at August's court for two more months after departing himself. Yeah, no. OOC for Musical!FW and even more so for RL FW. But I get the musical's wish to give the kids a break.

In conclusion: marks for effort, but also, I can see why this has not been revived for a good long while, as opposed to, say, Elisabeth, when it comes to German language musicals picking a historical subject.

Re: Friedrich: Triumph und Tragödie

[cahn]

ahhhhhhhh I am trying really hard not to read this (except the end paragraph) so I can watch without too many spoilers. I am looking forward to at least some wtf :D

Re: Friedrich: Triumph und Tragödie

[mildred_of_midgard]

Since I'm *not* planning on watching this, thank you so much for the writeup! And I'm glad you were able to watch it.

it's not just the Katte/Wilhelmine but also Grumbkow/SD

*sigh*

we talked about this; given the spirit of the age, the existence of the most modern and best drilled army of Europe and the shape of the Prussian territories, even a lightside version of FW as a father would have not made Fritz into a pacifist, and he'd still gone for Silesia, though he might not have been such an attack-attack-attack type of general

Yeeeeeep to all this. Though I agree, psychological simplification is to be expected for a musical of this sort.

Oh, and I would "Fritz's ambition and restlessness" to that list of causes that would have contributed to an invasion even in the lightside FW AU.

One thing I'm not sure if I mentioned: I kind of think young Fritz's "death shroud" attitude toward the army might have been as much nurture as nature, i.e. teenage rebellion against his abusive father, rather than who he would have been with a lightside FW.

(I do severely question whether Fritz puts together an army from scratch if raised by Grandpa F1 instead of lightside FW.)

It's also telling that Fritz and Katte have no duet.

Well, then, what even is the point of this, says the Fritz/Katte shipper. :P

(I'm also nerd enough to complain about his wearing a shirt and his head being covered by a paperback/hood

I wish to note that of all the depictions of Katte's execution I've seen, the only one (Thronfolger) where they felt the need to include the historically accurate detail of Katte removing his shirt was the only one where the actor had pecs that needed to be shown off. :P

- I mean, after all the trouble we went to accumulating contemporary execution descriptions, it's just a Pavlovian reaction to mutter about this.)

LOL forever! I inadvertently conditioned you. :D

It's a fierce duet with both performers really bringing it, and it culminates with Fritz demanding submission and getting it, and it's absolutely heartbreaking.

:(

Trust me, I made more money due to said efforts than I ever received from my Prussian Alcina. The salary really wasn't what kept me in this mantrap of a country for three nerve-wrecking years.

LOL, no, we've seen you all gay-for-Fritz, Voltaire, there's no getting away from it. Ghost!Katte missed the mark on that one. Though if he's meant to be Fritz's conscience, maybe it works on that level: Fritz's own fears and loneliness.

(Though I will say that all the praise certainly works with his praise kink. *g*)

*g* I still want to write a praise kink sex scene with Fritz (and Voltaire?) one day.

Re: Friedrich: Triumph und Tragödie

[selenak]

You're welcome. I figured you might, given your difficulties with watching films.

Incidentally, the "death shroud" quote gets an entire song of its own, with Fritz singing "no Sterbekittel for me!" just before his final big pre escape attempt clash with FW. Agreed that this was a counter reaction to FW ramming the military down his throat and likely would not have happened with a lightside FW. (Much like his attitude towards German as a language.)

(I do severely question whether Fritz puts together an army from scratch if raised by Grandpa F1 instead of lightside FW.)

That is indeed a far less likely outcome. Along with Fritz putting himself through an austerity program along with the country in order to turn it from broke to prospering. Yes, he cultivated a modest public life style himself later post 7 Years War in rl, wearing only uniforms, but that didn't stop him building palaces with Silesian marble and paying for statues and orchestras. Seriously, both the hero worshipping and the decontructing historians I've read agree that in this sense, without FW, you do not get Frederick the Great or Prussia as a serious European power instead of a so-so German principality, full stop.

I wish to note that of all the depictions of Katte's execution I've seen, the only one (Thronfolger) where they felt the need to include the historically accurate detail of Katte removing his shirt was the only one where the actor had pecs that needed to be shown off.

The actor got shirtless in his sex scenes as young Peter the Great in that other 80s tv series about an 18th century monarch, too, and it's a nice view, is what it is. :) BTW, to be fair, there's an obvious reason why they didn't do that with Katte in the musical, and also why his head is covered, and he doesn't speak. The Katte actor is on stage with a mike so often (in full Gens d'Armes uniform) as a ghost that I assume they used a stuntman for the execution scene, otherwise he'd have to get back into his coat and put his mikrophone on in seconds.

Well, then, what even is the point of this, says the Fritz/Katte shipper.

You get a hug and a playful kiss earlier, but yeah. A musical heavily featuring the crown prince years without a Fritz/Katte duet is missing the obvious.

Re: Friedrich: Triumph und Tragödie

[prinzsorgenfrei]

Yay, someone watched it!

I did not want to tell anyone about SD/Grumbkow, I feel like everyone needs to experience that wtf moment for themselves :'D I agree with your whole review, you put it in words way better than I ever could have!

I did get the impression the script wanted to have his cake and eat it in terms of Fritz and Katte, i.e., on the one hand, there's the invented romance with Wilhelmine for the no-homo-crowd, on the other, the way Fritz reacts throughout does get across, imo, that he's having feelings for Katte himself.

T h i s! So much this! I mean... "you'll lose your pretty head", the kiss, the reaction to Katte's "oh, we have a weird friendship" after their super long hug, the fact that he's hallucinating him 56 years later after barely interacting, that "Forget my sister and run away with me, let me tenderly embrace you from behind"-scene... Someone in that production shipped it and didn't tell the main writers.

The award for most cringeworthy lyrics goes to: the Orzelska-seduces-Fritz number in Dresden

Another thing that I think should be mentioned are the random ladies in cheap wigs clinging to the bed posts in that scene, because... yeah.

I do honestly feel sorry for Tobias Bieri. There are other recordings where his singing is better, so maybe they just picked a bad day to record...? I do vaguely recall there being some form of pre-premiere thing where he had to sing with an inflamed throat, not sure how close that was to the actual stage show, time wise. Recording the premiere and only the premiere may not have been the smartest move on Spotlight's part.

FMuT is certainly no Elisabeth, quality wise, that is for sure... Maybe more along the lines of Ludwig 2. Although I might get that association because Ludwig 2 also had a lot of het stuff where there shouldn't be het stuff (and even a tender dramatic embrace with Ludwig and his Totally Straight Buddy. I sense a pattern).

Re: Friedrich: Triumph und Tragödie

[selenak]

I haven't watched or heard anything from Ludwig 2 yet, though I'm vaguely curious, between Konstantin Wecker's involvement and me living in Munich. But if you want to read a spoof on how a Frederician themed musical NOT censoring the gay would go, I offer you Lehndorff! The Musical.

"Forget my sister and run away with me

You'll laugh, but rl Fritz did show such a reaction, though not to imaginary Wilhelmine/Katte, but to actual Voltaire-flirts-with-Ulrike. More here.

Being somewhat more invested in the siblings than in the boyfriends, I have to say that when Fritz replied to Musical!Katte's "but what about Wilhelmine, are we just leaving her behind?" objections with "I'll write her a letter, she'll understand", I thought, yeah, no. I mean, we'll never know how much or little Wilhelmine knew in advance about this particular escape plot, but she definitely knew about the general idea, wasn't happy about it, and Fritz wasn't happy hat she wasn't happy. Also, he did say goodbye, of sorts.

(I'm with Mildred that while neither Fritz nor Wilhelmine would have admitted this to themselves, there must have been some mutual resentment festering beneath all the other stuff, on his part that she kept trying to dissuade him from escaping an inreasingly horrible situation, and on her part that he was willing to leave her in said situation.)

Back to the musical, and speaking of singing abilities, considering that Katte is largely a speaking role (since he only sings as part of the "This is our time" trio which is largely carried by Fritz and Wilhelmine, and then a bit with Wilhelmine later), I wonder whether this is because they didn't want to have too many tenors?