In a box, simple pine
So, just as an anchor posting for a return to discussion of Mawrdew Czgowchwz (to resume Wednesday morning), La Cieca offers a little trivia question for the cher public. No prizes for the winner, but your doyenne is sure that sheer competitiveness will inspire you as so often before.
In the second chapter of Mawrdew Czgowchwz, two earth-shaking operatic events are scheduled to transpire in the same week at the Old Met: la Czgowchwz’s role debut as Isolde and Morgana Neri‘s farewell as Norma. These events were fictional, of course, so your question is: what operas actually did play the Met on those two nights?
Rigoletto 12/25/1947
Hansel and Gretel and Midsummer Night’s Dream 12/26/1947
Huh!
Neri’s farewell date saw two performances, no?
a ‘Lohengrin’ matinee and a ‘Hoffmann’ evening performance. Christmas Eve of 1955.
The Isolde date is escaping me…
I think ‘Faust’ for the Isolde debut date…
Well, here’s a hint: what social event happens the night before the fateful first Czgowchwz Isolde? And what red-letter day does that event celebrate?
Can I buy a vowel?
the winter solstice fete at the Countess Madge’s mansion
Samson et Dalila for the Isolde debut?
La Forza del Destino…
Okay, now we’re getting somewhere!
La Cieca’s poked around a bit about how to “do” a book club (as opposed to most of her endeavors, which she flies into blindly and purely trusting that trial and error is bound to work sooner or later, an attitude that has been punished by innumerable one-time television events that somehow didn’t make it onto the DVR and an average of two mornings a week when the coffee maker sits there inactive, smugly insisting that your doyenne set the timer for 7:30 pm, because, after all, who doesn’t want a fresh pot of coffee then?)
But anyway, she’s decided to go with the experts on this one and throw out a few starter questions elsewhere on this thread. Jump in any time you like, cher public!
Ohh 55! Ach, I got confused with the radio broadcast and the 1947 Packard, ho ho ho. Samson et Delilah and Don Pasquale?!
First question.
So: “Gotham as it once was, when it was truly fabulous.” What was so fabulous about New York then (as celebrated in Mawrdew, and what’s gone missing? Or, to put it another way, assuming that Gotham used to be Miss Barbra Joan Streisand (which it sort of was, actually), answer this musical question:
My personal favorite recording of this song.
Well, not having been there… in the book Old New York seems so much more classy and hopeful, for starters. Part of what I responded to in the piece as a whole was the sense of idealism – that it was safer to be an idealist, artistically and otherwise – a feeling which was embodied in the picture of New York, the safer place in which to be…. A smaller island where folks seemed more refined, culturally rooted… less jaded perhaps – I mean, even when those characters were jaded they seemed jaded in a response to something more hopeful than that which jaded-ness springs from nowadays– Now we’re so jaded we’re jaded about being jaded, haha… That’s my perception….
Question the second.
This one’s right off the “how to run a book club” website, and in this context I think it’s pretty hilarious, but maybe a thought or two may be provoked as well.
Do the characters seem real and believable? Can you relate to their predicaments? To what extent do they remind you of yourself or someone you know?
Seeing so much of my inner/dream life on these pages made me feel more like a real person. Oh, I know…. but it’s TRUE. Like when I read the DSM in high school…. Ok, that one’s not Quite true…. You know, though, my only gripe might be that there wasn’t much of any technical musical discussion – I mean, for all the fantasy, I had to suspend the most belief (and other than this I didn’t feel I had to suspend much) when it came to characters who were musicians because sometimes I wanted them to have more music theory conversations/jokes/arguments (just like the conversations/jokes/arguments about everything else on earth) and the like, and for MC to talk even a little bit about vocal technique or complain about a draft or something. I mean, a lot of it was beyond that completely, but it would have been a nice touch for me that would have fleshed out the musician characters more. To talk more about scale degrees than specific notes, or about what happened at a certain chord rather than a certain lyric— I guess that’s not the point of view, and it’s a verbal journey, and McCourt is above all VERBAL– still, I think it would have given me an even richer experience.
Do the characters seem real and believable?
Yes, most of them, very much so, except one: Jacob Beltane:
Mawdrew Czgowchwz opens the list of characters at the beginning of the book. The list ends, with “and …. Jacob Beltane” without the brief description McCourt uses for all the other characters (as in Halcyon Q. Paranoy “the paramount Gotham arbiter”). So Beltane is set apart from the beginning as someone special..
I mean, how real is he? “The perfection of my seeming is Czgowchwz” is what he says himself. Jameson (twin…) recognises him as the “male reflection” of Mawrdew: “Singing woman/singing man.” Mawrdew herself says he is an enigma. Jacob’s favorite music are the Enigma Variations. Mawrdew and Jacob live in a loft owned by twins, sing twins in the Crplaczx opera composed for them, etc. etc. The four pages of dialogue they have together are very strange – almost like lines from a movie Mawdrew dreams she will make one day? This is obviously something I need to work out for myself.
Can you relate to their predicaments?
Yes, I can relate to what Paranoy does – if you keep repeating how great a singer is, she gets better every time you do it. I also love that he does something with his admiration – he writes articles (“Facets of the Fabulous”), and books (“The Czgowchwz Moment”). He takes notes during recitals (he writes down the titles of all seventeen encores of the “Revelation” recital).
To what extent do they remind you of yourself or someone you know?
Have done the Diva-Dienst myself, to a certain extent. Travelling to far-away concerts, sending flowers to dressing rooms (not throwing…). Wikipedia instead of broadsides.
Inspired by the book club on Parterre, I read this book over the last two days in Santa Fe as a mental sorbet from some Spratlan.
It took me FOREVER to get into. I started the first chapter in DFW and, although briefly distracted by men in overalls leading what appeared to be a polygamous cult, really had to concentrate to work out what the hell was going on. Fortunately, a few chapters in, things started to settle and I could follow the plot. To be honest, it was probably only the tedium of delayed flights which kept me reading (though I’m glad I did).
But I’m puzzled by your distaste for Beltrane, isn’t he just the male version of Mawdrew? I found all the characters to be such caricatures to single out Beltrane, who probably is the most blandly drawn in the whole book, strikes me as odd.
It is not that I dislike him – I just don’t understand him. But with all the enigma hints, that is probably the idea?
And a third, because La Cieca likes things neat.
Did certain parts of Mawrdew Czgowchwz make you uncomfortable, annoyed or angry? Oh, come on, remember who we’re talking to here — Of course certain parts of the book made some of you angry. So, how come?
Some of the symbolism (the color orange, twins, numbers, Messiaen) is a little thick, and not always clear to me, as I have amply proven above. But nothing serious that prevents me from returning to this book in the future. Now on to the sequel.
Yes, it’s the kind of thing one might process in layers, like Shakespeare, not that it’s Shakespeare (and not that it’s not great either). Agreeing again, it wasn’t enough to deter me from enjoying the story, being that there’s enough, overall line to carry the reader through the murkier prose/more obscure tangents. Sooo, I really wonder how you’ll feel about the sequel. I just finished – found it a bit difficult…. won’t say anymore, I know how I hate to have expectations built for me about books…
True – I did not get most of the Maria Callas stuff, and still enjoyed the book. Instead, I thought of Maria Cebotari, or of Marie Collier. In my mind Mawrdew looks exactly like Marie Collier in her Emilia Marty costume…