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.
Too many excellent entries for me to compete with, so I’ll content myself with the observation that any singer performing such tasks as laid out in definition B would become known as a Fachtotum.
Bravo, armer. An apprentice singer called Alan from the Florida Keys would therefore be known as Largo Al Fachtotum.
Wow, I always finished the sentence like this:
I must say theassholes were out in full force for the opening night of the new Mary Zimmerman Norma.
I never thought a new word needed to be coined.
I can’t imagine a better entry for item A than Rysanekfreak’s “pooh-poohrazzi”–but here goes:
A. Naybobs
B. Trovatorture
or Skilljuggery
or Multicasting
Another possibility for B:
Ripoffera
And another possibility for A:
Pillistines
A. Clunque
B. Schlepamento
Portermento.
Or the Cluque (pronounced cluck)
1. NaziRazzis
2. Bühnentoten
How about Fachists?
and to borrow from another post, fachtotums.
Fachists are the people who would boo Domingo’s Boccanegra and were gearing up for Gheorghiu’s Carmen.
1. Bitchini “Ah! The Bitchini in the Dress circle were especially rude tonight!”
2. John Doylism “I’m not loving tonight’s Lucia, having Enrico carry out his desk was too much John Doyism for me” (in reference to the horrendous revival production of Sweeney Todd on Broadway where the cast had to play instruments, move scenery, practically sew their own costumes.
Hopefully multiples are allowed. I can narrow, if forced!:
A1) Clique (yin to Claque’s yang, as in clique-and-claque/”Click-n-Clack”)
A2) Cluck or Cluque (what these old queens sound like, sounds like a chicken, or like Dame Joan, and rhymes with claque)
A3) BAQ (Bitter Aging Queens, or Bitter Aged Queens: rhymes with “claque”)
A4) Complaisaint’s (ain’t complaisant, hardly eager to please)
A5) Laffables (a surly adaptation of “affable”, sounds like “laughable”, not pleasant or benign)
It seems that “Regitheatre” or “Eurotrash” already sort of meet the requirements of the second definition, BUT, here are some new goodies…
2A) Trivialismo (using ending of Verismo, and trivial, shallow, or hollow)
2B) Extranauseous (extraneous + nauseous, and play on opera “Extras”, and not intrinsic)
2C) Regie Minora, or Regieminora (director’s opera, but small and of lesser importantance, and, yes, a play on Labia Minora)
2D) Nihil Ad Rem (latin for having “nothing to do with the point”, off-target or off-course)
Oh, dear lord, so hard to turn off the faucet. Borrowing from Kathy Griffin’s “Schmemmys!” (for the “Emmys”)…
2E) Verishmo!
2F) Schmopera!
Well group A are already well known. They are Republicans.
As for group B, they are also well known, as Members of Young Artists Programs, or MOYAPS.
1.bitchoisie [although this might actually exit...thoughnot in Urban Dictionary
2. underported [on pattern of underpowered]
1. Boobs!
2. Cheap. No need to come up with a new word when there’s already a highly suitable word.