# Most Absurd Plot



## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

I know many opera stories stretch belief but Ernani, for me, makes Azucena throwing her own baby in the fire have a real legitimate case -- (she was demented) but he deciding, out of honor, to take his own life if he ever hears a horn blow is beyond rational.


----------



## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Mozart's _L'oca del Cairo_ (_The Goose of Cairo_) from 1783. Sheer desperation made him take this garbage on, and presumably total exasperation made him abandon it. The plot - such as it is - is courtesy of Wikipedia:

_Don Pippo, a Spanish Marquess, keeps his only daughter Celidora locked up in his tower. She is betrothed to Count Lionetto, but her true love is Biondello, a wealthy gentleman. Biondello makes a bet with the Marquis that if he can rescue Celidora from the tower within a year he wins her hand in marriage. He succeeds by having himself smuggled into the tower garden inside a large mechanical goose._

Of course, the best way to rescue someone unnoticed is by wheeling a massive contrivance right up to the tower and using it to gain access, but crucially it has to be in the form of a goose...


----------



## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

nina foresti said:


> makes Azucena throwing her own baby in the fire have a real legitimate case


as it is, for the meaning of that implies - you should never intend any harm to a noble.

the opera Rigoletto has the same kind of message in the ending.


----------



## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

everyone be careful to hurry seeing this or that opera plot as irrational.

first you do some research on the mores of the time.

people were not stupid back then.

keep that in mind.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Zhdanov said:


> everyone be careful to hurry seeing this or that opera plot as irrational.
> 
> first you do some research on the mores of the time.
> 
> ...


People are stupid now, so I presume they were also stupid back then.


----------



## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

You're a seasoned opera buff, Woodduck - how about a suggestion or two? Sadly, Zhdanov is offline so I can't ask him the same question.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

elgars ghost said:


> You're a seasoned opera buff, Woodduck - how about a suggestion or two? Sadly, Zhdanov is offline so I can't ask him the same question.


Seasoned maybe, but there are members who know more obscure operas than I do. I'm not sure I can beat the OP's suggestion of _Ernani._ There may be good reasons for committing suicide at one's wedding ceremony, but keeping a promise to a rival for the hand of the woman you're about to marry probably isn't one of them. The whole plot of the opera is convoluted, the soprano is torn into three pieces (figuratively) by three men who want her, and it's only some really good tunes that make the whole thing bearable.


----------



## Open Book (Aug 14, 2018)

elgars ghost said:


> Mozart's _L'oca del Cairo_ (_The Goose of Cairo_) from 1783. Sheer desperation made him take this garbage on, and presumably total exasperation made him abandon it. The plot - such as it is - is courtesy of Wikipedia:
> 
> _Don Pippo, a Spanish Marquess, keeps his only daughter Celidora locked up in his tower. She is betrothed to Count Lionetto, but her true love is Biondello, a wealthy gentleman. Biondello makes a bet with the Marquis that if he can rescue Celidora from the tower within a year he wins her hand in marriage. He succeeds by having himself smuggled into the tower garden inside a large mechanical goose._
> 
> Of course, the best way to rescue someone unnoticed is by wheeling a massive contrivance right up to the tower and using it to gain access, but crucially it has to be in the form of a goose...


I've never heard of this, I thought you were joking. Maybe this should be under the recent "Operatic Oddities" thread as well. A Trojan chicken, and the male character's name is "Blondie".


----------



## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

nina foresti said:


> I know many opera stories stretch belief but Ernani, for me, makes Azucena throwing her own baby in the fire have a real legitimate case -- (she was demented) but he deciding, out of honor, to take his own life if he ever hears a horn blow is beyond rational.


I don't know Ernani, but I thought Azucena was in Trovatore, and tossed mistakenly tossed her baby into the fire, thinking it was some other baby.


----------



## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Yes Fritz, that is what I said. A logical case can be made for mistakenly throwing her own baby in the fire as she was so completely distraught with what they did to her mother that she went slightly mad. It seems quite likely that in her mental state she accidentally made the horrible mistake of throwing her own baby in the fire.


----------



## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

nina foresti said:


> Yes Fritz, that is what I said. A logical case can be made for mistakenly throwing her own baby in the fire as she was so completely distraught with what they did to her mother that she went slightly mad. It seems quite likely that in her mental state she accidentally made the horrible mistake of throwing her own baby in the fire.


Oh, Now I see. You were comparing to Ernani, not saying it was Ernani. My misread.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

Babies thrown onto bonfires, as Charles Osborne suggests, wouldn't have seemed so absurd to Verdi. Russian soldiers attacked his own village of Le Roncole when he was a child; his mother hid with him in the belfry while they killed and looted.

But, yes, _Ernani _is improbable. It's meant to be; Hugo was striking a blow for Romanticism, freeing French theatre from the shackles of Classicism.


----------



## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Suoperhorn's law of opera : The opera has yet too be written with a plot as ridiculous as the things that happen every day in real life .


----------



## aussiebushman (Apr 21, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> There may be good reasons for committing suicide at one's wedding ceremony, but keeping a promise to a rival for the hand of the woman you're about to marry probably isn't one of them. The whole plot of the opera is convoluted, the soprano is torn into three pieces (figuratively) by three men who want her, and it's only some really good tunes that make the whole thing bearable.


I respectfully suggest it may be better to commit suicide BEFORE the wedding. It will save one the trouble of deciding at what stage later on to perform the deed.

More relevant to the initial question, I am another dedicated opera lover so please bear that in mind when I say that most opera plots are pretty stupid if one wishes to be objective about it. However, Superhorn's comment seems to be highly accurate. Humans are stupid in the main


----------



## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

nina foresti said:


> A logical case can be made for mistakenly throwing her own baby in the fire as she was so completely distraught with what they did to her mother that she went slightly mad. It seems quite likely that in her mental state she accidentally made the horrible mistake of throwing her own baby in the fire.


no, the symbolism of that scene is in the very fact one of the babies was of noble origins.

it was the heavens, nature and hell itself that prevented any harm occur to him.

he gets put to death in the end only because his noble brother willed so.

such is the allegory, and it should be taken as is, with no guess.


----------



## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Open Book said:


> I've never heard of this, I thought you were joking. Maybe this should be under the recent "Operatic Oddities" thread as well. A Trojan chicken, and the male character's name is "Blondie".


I wouldn't have the imagination to think this up! :lol:

Just as well Mozart ditched it - even allowing for the thinness of many 18th century _opera buffa_ plots this goose was more of a turkey. Perhaps in the following century the Offenbach and Henri Meilhac/Ludovic Halévy team could have done something with it.


----------



## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Dr. Shatterhand said:


> Babies thrown onto bonfires, as Charles Osborne suggests, wouldn't have seemed so absurd to Verdi. Russian soldiers attacked his own village of Le Roncole when he was a child; his mother hid with him in the belfry while they killed and looted.
> 
> But, yes, _Ernani _is improbable. It's meant to be; Hugo was striking a blow for Romanticism, freeing French theatre from the shackles of Classicism.


I was wondering what the play is like (after all it sparked a riot). I have it at home in French, but haven't read it yet.

Nick


----------



## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Zhdanov said:


> no, the symbolism of that scene is in the very fact one of the babies was of noble origins.
> 
> it was the heavens, nature and hell itself that prevented any harm occur to him.
> 
> ...


Do you have any evidence that this was the point of the opera? Do we know that it was the interpretation of the writer who wrote the play? Could the opera have a different interpretation depending on what Cammerano and Verdi thought? Do we know that they subscribed to that interpretation? I very much doubt that Verdi (an anti-clerical humanist) would have believed in a divine right of the nobility!

Do narrative works of art have only one interpretation? Can they have more than one? Are not different productions of a stage work different interpretations of it in some way? If you only allow for one interpretation of a work of fiction then who has the authority to decide what that one is other than the creator of the work? What if the playwright intended one thing and Cammerano and Verdi another?

I would suggest that your interpretation is _one_ interpretation, but not _the_ interpretation. If there is a moral to Trovatore and Rigoletto it's a warning about how revenge turns itself on the perpetrator in the end (in these cases by the death of innocent loved ones of the perpetrators (often their own children)). It's the same story as _The boy in the striped pajamas_ where the anti-semitic commander of an extermination camp ends up finding out his son was accidentally exterminated in the camp himself. We are all humans and whatever you do to others you also do to yourself. That seems far more in line with the ideals of Verdi.

That doesn't mean that there wasn't censorship in Italian theatres at that time, or that the killing of a nobleman was problematic on the nineteenth century Italian stage. Nor does it mean that you are wrong if you choose to interpret the work in your own way.

N.


----------



## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

The Conte said:


> Do you have any evidence that this was the point of the opera? Do we know that it was the interpretation of the writer who wrote the play? Could the opera have a different interpretation depending on what Cammerano and Verdi thought? Do we know that they subscribed to that interpretation? I very much doubt that Verdi (an anti-clerical humanist) would have believed in a divine right of the nobility!
> 
> Do narrative works of art have only one interpretation? Can they have more than one? Are not different productions of a stage work different interpretations of it in some way? If you only allow for one interpretation of a work of fiction then who has the authority to decide what that one is other than the creator of the work? What if the playwright intended one thing and Cammerano and Verdi another?
> 
> ...


*Rigoetto* itself of course fell foul of the censors, with the librettists having to make the origial character of the King in Hugo's _Le roi s'amuse_ into a Duke, as the depiction of the nobility on stage in Italy at that time was controlled by the censor. The male lead in *Un Ballo in Maschera* (who behaves far better than the Duke in *Rigoletto*) became an American governor as the depiction of regicide on stage was also banned at the time.

As you say, everything we know about Verdi would suggest that he certainly did not believe in the divine right of nobility. In fact the nobleman is actually the villain in quite a lot of his operas. (*Il Trovatore*, *La Forza del Destino*, *Luisa Miller*, *Rigoletto* to name the most famous examples).


----------



## Sieglinde (Oct 25, 2009)

Ernani is really something else XD He's stupid even by tenor standards.

There are so many WTF plots, though. Poor Azucena making a terrible mistake in the middle of a ptsd-induced hallucination it forgivable.

Lohengrin: "Hi I'm Mysterious Knight and I'll marry you but you must never ask my name." 
Elsa: "Ok, but how are you going to sign the marriage papers?" 
Lohengrin: "The libretto doesn't discuss that minor detail." 
(later) Elsa: "But really, my dear, who ARE you?"
Lohengrin (showing breadsticks in his armour) I have to go right now immediately

(also the fact that Parsifal could have a kid but poor Amfortas had sex one (1) time and he suffered horribly for years if not decades)

The logistics of Amelia Grimaldi's backstory. Did Maria run away with Simon? If yes, how did she end up back at her father's house? If she visited hoping to smooth things over, why didn't she bring his granddaughter along? If she never actually escaped, how did baby Maria end up with Simon? And then the whole "Amelia is basically raised by her grandpa who never realizes who she is even though she wears a pendant with his daughter's picture" situation. This is almost "let's hide Luke on Tatooine with Anakin's relatives and let him keep the Skywalker name" levels of stupid. 

I masnadieri, while I love it, has some absolutely crazy plot elements. "My friend was about to be executed so I set Prague on fire as a diversion to save him. It seemed like a good idea at the time." (Carlo Moor can high five Zurga, their problem solving ideas are eerily similar.) And the libretto really cut out some of the original play's wildest things like Carlo going back home in a paper thin disguise or Francesco strangling himself with a cord he rips off his hat. (How this is supposed to work without the audience rolling with laughter, I have no idea. Opera productions just tend to give the baritone a dagger and let him sort it out.)

Zauberflöte... is a ******* mess. The music is divine but the libretto is a dumpster fire.

And then there is Forza and the fatal ankle shot XD


----------



## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

The Conte said:


> Do you have any evidence that this was the point of the opera?


need no evidence to what is on the surface of the story and obvious to everyone.



The Conte said:


> Do we know that they subscribed to that interpretation?


sure we do since the music of that opera does follow its plot honestly and straight.



The Conte said:


> I very much doubt that Verdi (an anti-clerical humanist) would have believed in a divine right of the nobility!


it wasn't up to him to express his beliefs in works he made to order of then ruling elites.



The Conte said:


> Do narrative works of art have only one interpretation?


yes, of course.



The Conte said:


> Can they have more than one?


polyphony of meanings? hidden messages? sure there must be some... one day we'll talk it over.



The Conte said:


> If you only allow for one interpretation of a work of fiction then who has the authority to decide what that one is other than the creator of the work?


a investigator has... researchers aren't we?



The Conte said:


> What if the playwright intended one thing and Cammerano and Verdi another?


this only is decided by the customer, that is by one to whose order the opera is written.


----------



## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

Tsaraslondon said:


> everything we know about Verdi would suggest that he certainly did not believe in the divine right of nobility


no one did, but all the more it was important to emphasise the exclusive status of nobility.

even today, take for example some English TV drama, like 'The Price Of Coal' -










- a prince visits a coalmine, one miner badmouths the royals, and guess who happened to be in the crew that got buried under landslide in the mining disaster next day? get the message?


----------



## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Zhdanov said:


> need no evidence to what is on the surface of the story and obvious to everyone.
> 
> sure we do since the music of that opera does follow its plot honestly and straight.
> 
> ...


You _are_ Donald Trump and I claim my five pounds!

(Sorry Boris, he's still more famously outrageous than you!)

N.

P.S. Seriously, in which case the onus is on you to demonstrate the validity of your point by showing that Vincenzo Jacovacci interpreted the baby throwing in that way and that he was instrumental in making sure that Cammerano and Verdi toed his line!


----------



## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

The Conte said:


> the onus is on you to demonstrate the validity of your point by showing that Vincenzo Jacovacci interpreted the baby throwing in that way and that he was instrumental in making sure that Cammerano and Verdi toed his line!


because otherwise the episode looks absurd, which is impossible because the folks like them do no jokes.


----------



## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Flotow's Martha has a pretty absurd plot. Two ladies in the Queen's court (the Queen's maid of honor and her servant) masquerade as common working girls and accidentally hire themselves out for a year of servanthood, escape, and eventually discover that the farmers they were serving are suitable spouses as the adopted brother of the farmer turns out to be a nobelman's long lost son. Absurd but a common situation for a number of operas.


----------



## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Fritz Kobus said:


> Flotow's Martha has a pretty absurd plot. Two ladies in the Queen's court (the Queen's maid of honor and her servant) masquerade as common working girls and accidentally hire themselves out for a year of servanthood, escape, and eventually discover that the farmers they were serving are suitable spouses as the adopted brother of the farmer turns out to be a nobelman's long lost son. Absurd but a common situation for a number of operas.


Noble people disguising themselves as/pretending to be commoners is a well used operatic trope. This in itself isn't as absurd as it might at first seem. (After all Marie Antoniette liked dressing up as a milkmaid and even had a rustic village built in the gardens of Versailles so that she could act that fantasy out!) However, the amount of nobles dressed up as commoners in Martha who just happen to bump into one another _does_ totally suspend belief. Then again perhaps that is part of the comedy in the work.

N.


----------



## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Zhdanov said:


> because otherwise the episode looks absurd, which is impossible because the folks like them do no jokes.


Who are the 'folks like them'?

When it comes to Trovatore it was Verdi who choose to set it because he liked the play and proposed it to Cammarano (he also paid Cammarano himself). Cammarano didn't like the play so Verdi gave him the chance to set _La Dame aux camelias_ instead, but Cammarano was happy to carry on working on Il Trovatore.

The opera wasn't commissioned and Verdi offered it to various theatres once it was written. Therefore if anybody 'ordered' Trovatore it was Verdi and if he didn't 'do jokes', then I've completely misunderstood Falstaff.

I don't find the Azucena episode absurd at all. I can't even begin to imagine the trauma somebody goes through if they see their own mother burnt alive.

N.


----------



## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

How about the "devoted" Jewish father who stands by and allows his daughter Rachel to be "berled in erl" rather than tell her the truth that she is, in fact, not his daughter at all but the daughter of his bitter enemy and a Christian to boot.


----------



## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

nina foresti said:


> How about the "devoted" Jewish father who stands by and allows his daughter Rachel to be "berled in erl" rather than tell her the truth that she is, in fact, not his daughter at all but the daughter of his bitter enemy and a Christian to boot.


Another example of the revenge can bite you on the bum plot.

N.


----------



## Sieglinde (Oct 25, 2009)

One opera book I read called La Juive "genderswapped Trovatore" and it really is


----------



## marceliotstein (Feb 23, 2019)

Very interesting discussion - I am intrigued by Zhdanov's explanation for Trovatore's bizarre backplot. It's plausible, and like others here I'm also curious whether or not the source play made this explanation clear, as well as whether or not Verdi's contemporary audiences understood it this way.

At the risk of stating the obvious, we can't leave out the near-fatal flaw in the three great Mozart/Da Ponte operas: the idea that people can put on a disguise and become unrecognizable (even at seduction-level close-up) to the people who know them best. It just seems like this would be really hard to pull off in the real world. Maybe candlelight made it easier.


----------



## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

marceliotstein said:


> At the risk of stating the obvious, we can't leave out the near-fatal flaw in the three great Mozart/Da Ponte operas: the idea that people can put on a disguise and become unrecognizable (even at seduction-level close-up) to the people who know them best. It just seems like this would be really hard to pull off in the real world. Maybe candlelight made it easier.


Don Giovanni and Nozze have the excuse that the disguise scenes take place at night in places where there is little light. I think the Nozze is fine (I've seen productions where the characters wear masks and have cloaks with hoods) as the Count has no reason to think that the woman hidding in the dark in his wife's clothes is anyone other than Susanna. The Don Giovanni scenes are a bit more complex, but when I played Leporello we made sure that Donna Elvira never saw his face. However the scene will be as convincing as how similar the singers cast as Giovanni and Leporello are to each other.

When it comes to Cosi, it really does stretch anyone's imagination, nor can I see a way that a director can get around it. It's not as if you can make Fiordiligi and Dorabella blind!

N.


----------



## Revitalized Classics (Oct 31, 2018)

_La Sonnambula_ has a remarkably thin story - the music is gorgeous all the same


----------



## Sieglinde (Oct 25, 2009)

There's also Amelia's very see-through veil and the fact her own husband can't recognize her. Has he never seen her coat? I know it's pitch black and away from the the city lights but come on. 

Maybe Renato just has terrible eyesight XD


----------



## Ina (Dec 24, 2019)

Sieglinde said:


> There's also Amelia's very see-through veil and the fact her own husband can't recognize her. Has he never seen her coat?


Just curious is this written somewhere in the libretto that her veil is definitely see-through? Thinking of a practical aspect of an aristocratic lady traveling alone (by foot or in a carriage waiting for her several meters away?) to the city outskirts, at midnight, in her expensive dress, several centuries ago, I don't think it would be entirely safe even nowadays, with a perfect public transport system, CCTVs. I always imagine Amelia would borrow some modest dress from her maid, to look more appropriate/be safe in such an isolated area, frequented probably only by outlaws. (It could be more reasonable for her to dress as a man for safety reasons, but this niche has been already occupied.)

Though with Un ballo being based on a real-life event, as for me it doesn't feel entirely just for this opera to score high on this list. It's amazing to know that the protagonist was such a generous noble person and really forgave his assassins on his deathbed, so his (probably typical operatic?) carefree character is actually in touch with reality.


----------



## Sieglinde (Oct 25, 2009)

Well, Anckarström was executed IRL, so Gustavo probably wasn't that forgiving (he did live a few days after being shot). Also, according to Swedish people I talked to, the real Gustavo was famously gay.


----------



## Ina (Dec 24, 2019)

Yep, I memorized it wrong, his Wiki page says that on his deathbed he received apologies from many of his political enemies (=Renato's apologies). I think no one could expect this or any other opera to be a documentary film, still in essence and in some details it reflects life (perhaps even more than an average opera plotline?): he heard a prophecy that he would be assassinated, the letter warning him about the plot was written by a male officer, not by a lady; IRL he opted to dashingly ignore it as well. I guess the opera wouldn't make it without a love story, so the libretto had to invent Amelia, the likes of Oskar obviously couldn't be realistically depicted as the king's sweetheart.


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

I was watching the broadcast of the Magic Flute from Glyndebourne yesterday. An absurd plot made even more absurd by being set in a kitchen with Sarastro as head chef!


----------



## BobBrines (Jun 14, 2018)

Speaking of absurd settings, the Dutch National Opera set Vivaldi's Juditha Triumphans as a staged opera in Nazi Germany!!!


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Any opera can be made absurd in an absurd production. That's a different matter for a different thread.


----------



## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> Any opera can be made absurd in an absurd production. That's a different matter for a different thread.


A thread perhaps best not begun, unless it is to provide warnings of what to avoid.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Fritz Kobus said:


> A thread perhaps best not begun, unless it is to provide warnings of what to avoid.


We've had threads about absurd productions. Sadly, there's endless material for discussion.


----------



## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Vivaldi's _Juditha Triumphans_ was actually an oratorio but who am I to split hairs?


----------



## BobBrines (Jun 14, 2018)

I promise not to further hijack this thread, but ^^^ was part of my point


----------



## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

DavidA said:


> I was watching the broadcast of the Magic Flute from Glyndebourne yesterday. An absurd plot


the Die Zauberflöte plot is no absurd, of course... far from that, it is being one of the most important & meaningful operas ever written, because it narrates of the conflict between the English monarchy and German freemasons, represented by The Queen of The Night and Sarastro characters, respectively. Tamino & Papageno characters are shown in contrast with one another, however both get rewarded in the end - to each his own, despite Papageno seems to deserve only punishment, still he finds understanding with generous & victorious Sarastro temple wise men.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Zhdanov said:


> the Die Zauberflöte plot is no absurd, of course... far from that, it is being one of the most important & meaningful operas ever written, because it narrates of the conflict between the English monarchy and German freemasons, represented by The Queen of The Night and Sarastro characters, respectively. Tamino & Papageno characters are shown in contrast with one another, however both get rewarded in the end - to each his own, despite Papageno seems to deserve only punishment, still he finds understanding with generous & victorious Sarastro temple wise men.


I agree that _Zauberflote_ is not absurd. It's an allegorical comic fantasy, filled with archetypes, and its meaning is illuminated by music of surprising profundity. Some literal souls just can't see the point of art that isn't realistic. A great many operas are based on fairy tales: Wagner, to name a prime example, must be a closed book to these folk. But then opera itself may seem absurd to them merely because people sing rather than speak.


----------



## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

I don't get the connection mentioned by Zhdanov - 'the conflict between the English monarchy and German Freemasons'. In the 1780s/90s I would have thought George III had more pressing personal issues unless there was something going on in his other realm of Hanover which I know nothing about.


----------



## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> I agree that _Zauberflote_ is not absurd. It's an allegorical comic fantasy, filled with archetypes, and its meaning is illuminated by music of surprising profundity. Some literal souls just can't see the point of art that isn't realistic. A great many operas are based on fairy tales: Wagner, to name a prime example, must be a closed book to these folk. But then opera itself may seem absurd to them merely because people sing rather than speak.


Maybe DavidA meant the production is absurd (I haven't seen it).

N.


----------



## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

elgars ghost said:


> I don't get the connection mentioned by Zhdanov - 'the conflict between the English monarchy and German Freemasons'. In the 1780s/90s I would have thought George III had more pressing personal issues unless there was something going on in his other realm of Hanover which I know nothing about.


Since the opera was written by Austrian freemasons I guess the idea is that it records a perceived conflict by masonic lodges in German speaking realms. George III may have been blissfully unaware of opposition to him.

N.


----------



## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Thanks for the reply. I know that most of George's own sons became Freemasons but I still can't see what any of it had to do with him, unless the idea of their joining the Freemasons was a kind of filial nose-thumbing.


----------



## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

elgars ghost said:


> Thanks for the reply. I know that most of George's own sons became Freemasons but I still can't see what any of it had to do with him, unless the idea of their joining the Freemasons was a kind of filial nose-thumbing.


It may not be that the Freemasons per se had something against him, but an interesting bit of politics amongst the German lodges. However, I don't know anything about it and I am not interested enough to do the research to find out. I've always thought that the Queen of the Night was a personification of the powers of darkness rather than a symbol for one particular person. If Zhdanov's theory were so, it would have made more sense for it to be the King of the Night, but then you wouldn't have the masonic misogynistic agenda kicking in. I just don't have the knowledge to debunk Zhdanov's suggestion, though.

N.


----------



## Autumn Leaves (Jan 3, 2014)

For me, the least logical part of _Il Trovatore_ isn't the case of Azucena and the two babies (I also believe she wasn't exactly in her rightful mind at that point). It's Leonora's master plan of saving Manrico. Fine, she was so disgusted by the Count that she wouldn't pretend to give in, gain his trust and escape. Fine, she didn't want to take the Tosca route and just kill him (with that same poison, for instance?). But couldn't she at least wait until Manrico was as far away as possible and _then_ drink the poison?


----------

