Mathieu Duplay 🌈

Yes, the right-wing culture warriors are saying that the very soul of France has been damaged by the theft of so-called crown jewels no one had heard of a week ago. Oh please. Can we be serious for a minute or two.

I wonder if Trump-era tat will be on display at the National Gallery in DC 150 years from now. "Genuine spray-painted plastic moulding from the Oval Office, ca. 2025." Same difference.

No, they didn't. Which is why the real treasures are (more or less) safe. Ironically, the stones and pearls were probably looted from some African colony, as @sandeepbak.bsky.social points out. The curse of Alberich, etc. Eugénie's Tuileries palace was the real Walhalla.

We are lucky that they went for some tacky Second Empire tat. There are real national treasures in there. World heritage.

*which

...grab the loot and walk away. The director of the Louvre will take the blame and probably get fired, but the real culprit is the Ministry of Culture and more generally speaking a succession of governments that have directed the money away from anything actually worth paying for.

The very serious point the original poster makes is about underfunding/understaffing, whoch is one of the root causes of the current French crise de régime. Culture and education have been massively underfunded for *decades*, so no one should be surprised that thieves can just walk into a museum,...

Victor Hugo despised these people so much that he wouldn't set foot in France until they were gone. The sentimental/symbolic value is nil.

...the Second Empire was a tasteless parody of the First, which was a dictatorship. Offenbach's Grande Duchesse has more humanity to her (at least she has a healthy appetite for attractive male company, whereas Eugénie was a prig and a prude, the kind that runs a brothel because it's lucrative).

Exactly! France doesn't have crown jewels anyway, and the kings and queens who had these made were deeply unserious people who ran tacky imitation monarchies that didn't survive longer than a couple of decades, from one revolution to the next. Eugénie in particular was a pretentious grifter, and...

This ⤵️

L’éblouissante chapelle palatine du Palais des Normands à Palerme (XIIe siècle) avec ses mosaïques byzantines et ses décorations arabes sur les voûtes.

Statue of a wolf that's headed throwing back and its mouth open being at the Moon if you go to the link there is a huge version of this image if you want to see this at 37 MB size

Howling Wolf — Southern Siberia, 500–200 BCE
wood with shell inlays
11.1 x 3.3 x 5.9 cm (4 3/8 x 1 5/16 x 2 5/16 in.)
www.clevelandart.org/art/1986.26

I bet he won't be paying the contractors. Fasolt, Fafner, etc.

I am OK with this stuff being in museums: history (good & bad), fine workmanship, etc -- at least until an agreement is reached with the people from whom the stones and pearls were stolen to make the tiara, the earrings, etc. But would I want it at home? For sentiment's sake? Not in a million years.

The would-be king tearing down the royal palace is not a development I was ready for. That must be because I don't understand the psychology of would-be kings.

YouTube video by Window into the Past A Woman of Affairs 1928 - Greta Garbo, John Gilbert (Clarence Brown) ⚡UPGRADE⚡ HD 1080p

Watching this on a loop.

So this is how it went down

Well, maybe not Alvaro, but one of those dark, brooding, Heathcliff-like figures. Onegin is far too boring to be Heathcliff.

Maybe the Violetta/Alfredo situation comes closest. But even Alfredo is less unresponsive.

Maybe it doesn't have to. The operatic Onegin models himself on Verdian heroes of the Byronic kind: Corrado in Il Corsaro, maybe, or Alvaro in Forza. But he is a walking cliché, a poseur. Verdi himself couldn't have dealt with this character.

I have heard the same from other people familiar with Pushkin. I actually think that the opera's structure is remarkably bold, with a protagonist who is very much an anti-hero and fakes every emotion he is unable to feel. In performance, it has never bothered me, quite the opposite in fact.

I haven't read Pushkin (shame on me), but you're right that he is an empty centre, a shallow, unsubstantial character compared to the others. Even Madame Larina has a more striking personality.

Sometimes the news can be puzzling. Why would anyone want to be king? That has to be the least enviable position I can think of. And why would anyone want to steal jewels once owned by Empress Eugénie? I despise Napoleon III and his family: dreadful, dreadful people. That's what museums are for.

Isn't that the point? Tatiana falls for the least remarkable, least deserving man around (as can happen...), is brutally rebuffed, then marries someone who actually loves her (Gremin). Unaccountably, she still loves the cad, but she is sensible enough to stay with her wonderful husband.

I'm not a Catholic, but I love Dialogues des Carmélites. That doesn't worry me at all.

Ah, well, you obviously get it. Some people do. It is full of marvellous music, and I am more than willing to make an effort.

Oh, I get it too! :) but there does seem to be some kind of vaguely sensible (??) pretext? Which I never seem to recall? :)

There's a passage in an E. M. Forster novel about the difference between a mystery and a muddle. Some of Boccanegra is mysterious. FroSch is one big muddle.

Nozze is another confusing, but by no means baffling, opera. I generally lose the thread when Cherubino gets dressed up as a girl (why?). No matter, the point is that *everyone* gets confused, and then sanity returns. But FroSch...