More than words can say
Are you ready for a competition, cher public? Well, get ready to don your lexicographer’s caps, because this one is all about the words. Your challenge: create a new word to fit each of the two definitions La Cieca will supply. Both these definitions are descriptions of situations very familiar to operagoers, and so your task is to come up with handy new words we can use in our everyday discourse. (An earlier example of such a useful coined expression is “barihunk.”)
So, our two definitions.
A. “The opposite of a claque; a group or cabal of audience members who arrive at the theater predisposed to dislike what they are about to see or hear, and eager to express their displeasure.”
Used in a sentence: “I must say the ______ were out in full force for the opening night of the new Mary Zimmerman Norma.”
B. “A style of production in which opera singers are required to schlep set pieces, dress people onstage, pretend to be scenery, and otherwise do things that are not ordinarily part of the AGMA job description.”
Used in a sentence: “The production dredged a new nadir of _________ when Susanna started playing the horn part in ‘Aprite un po’ quegli occhi’.”
Details of how the competition works:
Leave a comment below with your two newly-minted words. If you like, you may also include a brief rationale for each neologism.
Entries will be accepted through Friday Feb. 12 at midnight.
An independent panel of parterre.com experts will then decide upon the winner, who will be awarded a deluxe gift package including the recent Met releases of Thaïs and La Cenerentola and the Hilary Hahn Violin and Voice CD.
Please note that La Cieca reserves the right to exercise her notorious “whims of iron” in this as in all other matters.
A. “The Clap” (as in the venereal disease).
B. Can’t think of one right now.
How about the Bitchisti
and The Doyloniers
Pardon those whom participate in said behavior are Doyloniers and the style of the production would be Doylonic.
Or for B) Prêt-à-Doyler
1. The “boogeois” or phonetically “boojwazee”
2. Geslchelpkunstwerk
Eh heh. I meant Geschlepkunstwerk. To correct my non-existent word.
1. The Eeyores, although I hate to cheapen one of my favorite literary characters by associating them with such an odious assemblage.
2. P.S.style (pronounced “pisstyle) since such activity is usually necessary in elementary school productions.
1. since the first definition would fit 90 percent of the posters on this site, i’d suggest “parterrorists”
2. in honor of john doyle, the stage director famously associated with such shenanigans, how about “doyliness”?
“Parterrorists” should qualify for some nice parting gift from La Cieca.
1. If a claque comes ready to clap, then those who come ready to boo must be a booque, or bouque to keep it French.
2. Dinner Opera.
1. The Congrehation
2. Buh-Roke opera
For #1: “bashisti” (Bashers, with a nod to La Scala’s own.)
For #2: ummm…”grabsurdity.” The absurdity arising from a director’s grabbing at novelty by directing his singers to grab and drag sets, instruments, odd props, etc.
Best I can do at the moment.
1. boodience
2. singshlepp
#1: booboes
#2: fraudeville
#1: plaque (and when you get star getting a following plaquey build up!)
#2 appendix: Any person used in said unnamed production should be refered to as a setra!