Topic: Florestan´s Romantic Salon

[Scion7]

Happy Independence Day

Queue up the Enescu!

[Florestan]

Yes, just ask Brahms.

Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky...

Happy Independence Day

Queue up the Enescu!

Thank you! How come you know about it? It´s not even an official holiday, because of its association with the monarchy.

I will.

[Scion7]

Two reasons - one, my second discipline is as a historian, which is what do in my semi-retired position at a university; the other is that, while my current girlfriend is a Hungarian nurse, I've always had a taste for eastern-Eurowomen.     I've had a Romanian, a Latvian, and a couple of Russian gf's in the past.  I even have a 'friend' in Samara who comes over from time to time.

Do you care for the music of Smetana?

[Florestan]

Two reasons - one, my second discipline is as a historian, which is what do in my semi-retired position at a university; the other is that, while my current girlfriend is a Hungarian nurse, I've always had a taste for eastern-Eurowomen.     I've had a Romanian, a Latvian, and a couple of Russian gf's in the past.  I even have a 'friend' in Samara who comes over from time to time.

How old are you, if I may ask?

Do you care for the music of Smetana?

Apart from Vltava, the overture to The Bartered Bride and possibly the string quartets I haven´t heard anything else by him. What would you recommend me?

[Scion7]

How old?
You mean, since I fell in battle stopping the Turk at Targoviste, and arose?

<eyebrows going up and down rapidly emoticon>

Ma Vlast, certainly.  His piano music is also extraordinary.

[Florestan]

How old?
You mean, since I fell in battle stopping the Turk at Targoviste, and arose?

Vlad the Impaler did not die in the Battle of  Târgoviște.

Bram Stoker´s fabrication has nothing, but absolutely nothing to do with his real life and history.

But I am sure that as a professional historian you already knew that. 

His piano music is also extraordinary.

I´ll investigate, thanks.

[Scion7]

I'm Scion, not Vlad.   

Look up SMETANA-Macbeth and the Witches

[Dancing Divertimentian]

Apart from Vltava, the overture to The Bartered Bride and possibly the string quartets I haven´t heard anything else by him. What would you recommend me?

Opera fan or not this is a required romantic experience.

[Florestan]

Look up SMETANA-Macbeth and the Witches

Opera fan or not this is a required romantic experience.

Thanks, gentlemen. I do like opera so I will certainly look for it.

[Scion7]

 

Vinyl lives.     1956 & 1966, respecitively

Get this one, actually - smashing overture:

[Dancing Divertimentian]

Get this one, actually - smashing overture:

That's the same one I linked above. Mine is just the later reissue.

[Florestan]

Okay, this is the version I could get my hands on for the time being.



Do you know it?

It´s sung in German but I don´t mind (my very modest knowledge of German is still a thousand times better than my Czech --- and honestly, who follows the libretto while listening to an opera? not me, anyway ). The cast looks spectacular, the conductor no less and the orchestra and choir should do at least a very decent job. I will report back after listening.

Actually, here is what an Amazon reviewer wrote about it:

For music lovers who are unfamiliar with the history of this work, a couple preliminary remarks are in order. First on the fact that the Bride made its way into the world via its German libretto. Smetana's first language (as with many well-educated Czechs, e.g. Kafka) was German. It explains why the opera is sung in German on this album and why it is nonsense to claim greater authenticity for the Czech version. Second, a good half of the Bamberg Orchestra (greatly underestimated outside of Germany, but on the inside considered to be one of its finest) was staffed by musicians who were refugees from Bohemia during the War. It helps to know these things to put certain often debated issues into context. Finally that Smetana affiliated himself with the Neo-German School of Liszt & Co. That school had always bemoaned the lack of a really good comic opera from its adherent, and although Peter Cornelius wrote one, it was hardly the kind of masterpiece they were hoping for. Smetana on his part felt that he was destined to write the great tragic opera for his country; the last thing he expected to make a great name for him was a comic opera! But that's how matters turned out.
As for the recording under scrutiny, no praise can be too high for it. It is astonishingly well recorded for its era, and still sounds very good and clear. Rudolf Kempe's direction is spirited, mixing the brash with the sentimental, the comic banalities and the romantic love elements in a inimitable brew. No other conductor since then has even come close to giving such a brilliant portrayal of this masterpiece. Even if you don't understand the text fully (and there is a lot of colloquialism), the music carries you forward on its heady pulse.
The singing is mostly of a quality to match. Fritz Wunderlich, who died so tragically young, is a perfect lover, singing with great feeling and a smooth, mellifluous tenor voice. If you are familiar with his Tamino (Magic Flute, conducted by Böhm) expect something of the same superlative quality here. Gottlob Frick, although better known for his "black bass" and Wagnerian roles, brings a genuine comic basso feel to his role. The pity is that Pilar Lorengar's voice is a little stretched on occasion; she is the weak link in the trio of principals. On the other hand, all of the subsidiary cast are excellent, fully alive to the Bohemian "country fair" atmosphere.
As far as opera recordings are concerned, it is difficult to conceive how this could ever be bettered.

[Jo498]

I don't know the Bartered Bride except for the usual excerpts, but Cornelius' "Der Barbier von Bagdad" is quite underrated nowadays and deserves more attention. Together with Nicolai's "Merry Wives of Windsor" it is one of the more successful German romantic comic operas (there are a bunch by Lortzing as well as Flotow's "Martha" but they have not all aged well, nevertheless several used to be fairly popular on German/Austrian theaters until the 1970s).

There is a good (radio?) recording on Hänssler (cond. Leitner) and a bunch of historical recordings (I think there are also slightly different versions of the piece but I do not know the details).

[North Star]

A couple of lectures from Yale University Art Gallery that fit here.

Romantic art is perhaps best defined by its refusing definition. Intensifying the subjective nature of human experience, Romantic artists reached toward willfully indeterminate goals. They launched their work as songs without words—that is, as open-ended expressions that each individual viewer creatively completes. In the opening lecture for the exhibition The Critique of Reason: Romantic Art, 1760–1860, co-organized by the Yale University Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art, Joseph Leo Koerner, B.A. 1980, the Victor S. Thomas Professor of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University, puts words to some of the pictures on view.

Francisco Goya played a pivotal role in the history of printmaking. His five series of prints span a turbulent half century in Spain, defined by the Spanish Enlightenment, the downfall of the old regime, the Napoleonic invasion, and the restoration of a conservative monarchy. Janis A. Tomlinson, Goya scholar and Director of University Museums at the University of Delaware, in Newark, discusses the imagery of each of Goya’s series in relation to the historical context and the artist’s biography. Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Meant to Be Shared: Selections from the Arthur Ross Collection of European Prints at the Yale University Art Gallery.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/oovMD1Ig49o" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/oovMD1Ig49o</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/FVe3LogVzcQ" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/FVe3LogVzcQ</a>

   

[Scion7]

Let's not forget Goya's painting of Napoleon's men shooting some unruly Romanians!



 

[Florestan]

Let's not forget Goya's painting of Napoleon's men shooting some unruly Romanians!

You know, had Napoleon occupied Wallachia and Moldavia he´d have been hailed as a liberator. Many boyars briefly entertained that hope, actually. 

[Scion7]

The Romanians don't respect the Count:


Renfield: "Master! There's someone at the door. They want to see you. I ...  I think they're from the government."
Dracula: "How do you know?"
Renfield: "They're wearing shoes."


Femmunist: " . . . and therefore, by unanimous vote of the central committee, it has been decided to turn this castle into a training camp for our young athletes.  You - and your cockroach-eating friend over there - have 48 hours to GET OUT.  Good evening, comrade Count!"


Count: "Wait one minute! This is my home! My people cleared the land. We tortured innocent peasants for it.  We even murdered for it! By Romanian law, that makes it ours!"


Femmunist: "Now you listen to me, stupid!  In 48 hours, we'll be back here with trampolines, parallel bars, swings, and Nadia Camoneci!  DON'T be here!"
Count: "Don't be here?  Where am I to go?"
Femmunist: "You have a choice, comrade Count.  Either you spend the rest of your life in an efficiency apartment with seven dissidents and one toilet, or you gather up your aristocratic shit together and SPLIT!"


Count: "Renfield!"
Renfield: "Yes, master?"
Count: "What is an efficiency apartment?"
Renfield: "I don't know, master . . . . what's a toilet?"

     So, let us turn to the Romanian composer supreme.  Enescu, with his jagged version of Romanticism.
He started off looking back at the past; for example, his wonderful Piano Quartet in D, Op.16 from 1909.
While most critics would say his own voice comes through in the second piano quartet in d-minor from 1944,
for listening enjoyment, I say Opus 16 is more fun.  This pre-war, but post-Dracula boarding the ship back to Varna,
has a great 19th century Romantic feel.

 

[mc ukrneal]

The Romanians don't respect the Count:

That is just a fun movie.  I like the part where the psychiatrist pulls out the Jewish star and then they have a 'you are getting sleepy' contest.

[Scion7]

That is just a fun movie.  I like the part where the psychiatrist pulls out the Jewish star ...

What do you say to ....... THIS!!!!  (pulls out a Star of David)

Dracula: I would say, "why don't you go find a nice Jewish girl, Rosenberg, and leave Cindy alone?"

Rosenberg: (looks down at the Star) 'oh yeah, it's the other one, isn't it?'

 

[Florestan]

The Romanians don't respect the Count:

How could we respect, or even take seriously, someone whose name rhymes perfectly with the 4-letter word defining the male sexual organ? Dracula is actually the laughing stock of the whole nation.

Had Bram Stoker known Romanian, he´d certainly have chosen another termination for his name.