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.
1. Trashionistas
2. Bricolageurs
A. Bitterati
B. “Whatever, Martha!”
A) Haterati…gives the bitchyness a nice Jersey Shore flavor
B) Esultote
Haterati is fantastic, that gets my (alas non existent) vote.
1. Boo-whos, dis jockeys
2. Port-a-party, set a porter, maulaprops
B. Bauschdom
a. caboos
(from cabal)
b. maid of all work
A. Gelboos.
Groups that go to the opera to boo. After the groups that multiplied during the tenure of Met’s general manager Gelb due to his sponsoring horrible productions such as Zimmerman’s La sonnambula.
B. Geldless.
Said of a production where there is not much money for things like sets, stage hands salaries and such. After German for money, geld. Remember ‘The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny’, “Er hast kein geld!”
Example of usage:
Many people are afraid that in the spring the geldboos might be in full force in the house for Zimmerman’s ‘Armida’; others hope this economic recession will not make that production a geldles one.
A. Third-Norners
B. Verfremdungsoper
Best I could do on short notice. I’m not sure these improve of Clucque or Geschlepkunstwerk.
Operasexuals (Those whose deepest passions are inflamed by all things operatic)
Comprimorti (Small role singers who die of embarrassment at what they are asked to do on stage)
Don’t have one for (B). For (A): the “PECs”, for “Pre-existing Cuntitionists”.