Thursday, October 14, 2010

Mozart l'Opéra Rock: Roll Over Beethoveen, Mozart Needs the Extra Room to Spin



Though the Amateur Historian is very fond of French opera, she must confess herself confused by this latest work adorning the French stage. Mozart l'Opera Rock is, you guessed it, a rock opera about Mozart. The action of the play seems to be loosely based on the play Amadeus. This rock opera is a rich mine of absurdity, but the Amateur Historian would like to pull out this particular gem for her Gentle Readers. In this song, 'L'Assasymphonie', Salieri develops a suicide wish after hearing The Marriage of Figaro and proceeds to sing about it and to try and cut his wrists with a conductor's baton.

The Amateur Historian's favorite moment, however, is the highly symbolic one around 3:40 where Salieri, unable to contain his emotions to mere words or melody, makes a noise like a dying pterodactyl.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Gee, You Shouldn't Have


To continue on in our exploration of Balzac, his mother had a very ambivalent relationship with him, eventually prefering his brother, the product of an illict affair with a local landowner, to her first-born, the Coffee Addict.

At least she did have some sense of who her son was, as, when she drew up her will in the cholera epidemic of 1830, she left everything to her son-born-of-adultery... save a small coffee pot, which she left to Balzac.