tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90637896674645728892024-02-07T20:13:09.634-08:00My alternative WikipediaJRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.comBlogger61125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063789667464572889.post-27175520508478572592020-05-31T19:43:00.004-07:002020-05-31T19:46:37.282-07:00Schubert_ Der Erlkönig (D328) - subtitled in English -- Fischer Dieskau<br><br>
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<br><br>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063789667464572889.post-39361000105753089152020-01-01T20:44:00.000-08:002020-01-01T20:57:38.779-08:00Just online: Ingeborg Hallstein goes to the dentist<br />
<i>With assistance of that natural born comic Ivan Rebroff</i>
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An hilarious operatic pastiche with quite a medley of favorite operatic arias. Hallstein is as usual the ultimate female.
<br /><br />JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063789667464572889.post-68482244529838251612019-09-09T03:41:00.001-07:002019-12-09T21:39:32.900-08:00
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<b>Clickable table of contents for this site</b><br />
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<a href="https://jrwik.blogspot.com/2019/09/a-new-ingeborg-hallstein-channel-on.html">A new Ingeborg Hallstein channel on Youtube with lots of videos</a>
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<a href="https://jrwik.blogspot.com/2019/05/moscow-nights-moscow-nights-is-simple.html">Moscow nights</a>
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<a href="https://jrwik.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-late-lawrence-auster-1949-2013-by.html">The late Lawrence Auster 1949 – 2013 </a>
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<a href="https://jrwik.blogspot.com/2018/12/why-great-protestant-hymn-breaks-my.html">Why a great Protestant hymn breaks my heart</a>
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<a href="https://jrwik.blogspot.com/2018/12/musical-discoveries-in-idle-moments-i.html">Musical discoveries</a>
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<a href="https://jrwik.blogspot.com/2018/12/woofing.html">Bach's toccata and fugue in d minor at Passau</a><br /><br />
<a href="https://jrwik.blogspot.com/2018/10/tilt-train-has-been-nobbled-tilt-train.html">The Tilt Train has been nobbled</a><br /><br />
<a href="https://jrwik.blogspot.com/2018/09/a-new-favourite-pianist.html">A new favourite pianist -- Alice Sara Ott</a><br /><br />
<a href="https://jrwik.blogspot.com/2018/06/trim-taut-terrific.html">"Trim Taut & Terrific" -- the Lightburn Zeta</a><br /><br />
<a href="https://jrwik.blogspot.com/2018/04/emotional-music.html">Emotional music</a><br /><br />
<a href="https://jrwik.blogspot.com/2016/10/more-wonderful-singing-from-anna.html">More wonderful singing from Anna Netrebko </a>
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<a href="https://jrwik.blogspot.com/2016/09/marvellous-rendition-of-lippen-die.html">A marvellous rendition of <i>Meine Lippen, die kssen so heiss</i> by a young Anna Netrebko</a><br /><br />
<a href="https://jrwik.blogspot.com/2016/08/pergolesi-and-sabina-puertolas.html">Pergolesi and Sabina Pu‚rtolas</a>
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2016/07/gordon-lavelle-mangan-1924-biographical.html">Dr Gordon Lavelle Mangan (1924 - ): A biographical note</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2016/06/blog-post.html">Ingeborg Hallstein: Die Fledermaus (excerpt) </a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2016/04/ingeborg-hallstein-clip-i-have-just.html">Another Ingeborg Hallstein clip: "Ich bin die Christel von der Post". Also the Nightingale song by Grothe</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/07/austrohungarian-operetta.html">Austro/Hungarian operetta </a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/12/le-nozze-di-figaro.html">The marriage of Figaro</a>
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/10/zar-und-zimmermann-yesterday-i-got-in.html">The Tsar and the Carpenter</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/09/opernball-by-heuberger-height600.html">Der Opernball by Heuberger</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/09/17-september-2015-judith-srchttpushakova.html">Giuditta</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/09/die-herzogin-von-chicago-by-kalmanthe.html">The Duchess of Chicago</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/08/dollarprinzessin-srchttpi.html">Dollarprinzessin (Dollar Princess)</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/07/at-moerbisch-srchttpwww.html">Fledermaus (The bat) at Moerbisch </a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/07/simplicius-composed-1887.html">Simplicius (The simpleton)</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/07/i-first-watched-this-singspiel-some.html">Graf von Luxemburg (Count of Luxemburg)</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/07/a-wonderful-austrian-singing-lady-ute.html">A wonderful Austrian singing lady: Ute Gfrerer</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/07/der-vogelhaendler-der-vogelhaendler-is.html">Der Vogelhaendler (The bird merchant)</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/07/zirkusprinzessin-circus-princess.html">Zirkusprinzessin (Circus Princess)</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/07/der-rosenkavalier-richard-strauss-is.html">Der Rosenkavalier (The rose gentleman)</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/06/the-new-testament-canon-i-think-it-is.html">The New Testament canon</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/06/did-bach-set-psalm-23-as-i-have.html">Bach and Psalm 23 </a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/07/wiener-blut-splendid-farce-and.html">Wiener Blut (Vienna spirit)</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/06/das-land-des-laechelns-land-of-smiles.html">Das Land des Laechelns ('The land of smiles")</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/06/gross-hypocrisy-and-leftist-bias-in.html">Altemeyer's conceptual confusion</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/05/eine-nacht-in-venedig-i-have-now.html">Eine Nacht in Venedig (a night in Venice)</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/05/csardasfuerstin-i-am-continuing-my.html">Csardasfuerstin (Gypsy princess)</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/05/der-bettelstudent-i-watched-last-night.html">Bettelstudent (Beggar student)</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/05/der-zarewitsch-i-have-now-watched.html">Zarewitsch (Heir to the throne of Russia)</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/05/der-zigeunerbaron-its-sad-that-austro.html">Zigeunerbaron (Gypsy baron)</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/jesus-christ-superstar-i-saw-live.html">Jesus Christ Superstar</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/04/die-lustige-witwe.html">Lustige Witwe (merry widow)</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/a-few-more-notes-on-graefin-mariza-i-am.html">Graefin Mariza (Countess Maritza)</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/emerich-imre-kalman-who-devil-is.html">Emerich (Imre) Kalman and Graefin Mariza</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/i-am-writing-down-these-notes-as-aide.html">Fledermaus at Covent Garden </a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/was-paganini-psychopath-paganini-was.html">Paganini a psychopath? </a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/zigeunerliebe-and-gwf-hegel-i-guess-it.html">Zigeunerliebe (gypsy love) and GWF Hegel </a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/im-weissen-roessl-in-recent-days-i-have.html">Weissen Roessl (White Horse inn)</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/aida-most-incorrect-opera-i-guess-i-am.html">Aida</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/the-pirates-of-penzance-as-satire-and.html">"The pirates of Penzance" as satire</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/salzkammergut-salzkammergut-has-rather.html">Salzkammergut and "Im weissen Roessl" </a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/01/january-28-2015-swan-lake-2009.html">Swan Lake The 2009 performance by the Australian ballet</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/01/contra-glyndebourne-for-those-who-are.html">Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar) at Glyndebourne</a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2015/01/psalm-23-most-esteemed-psalm-would-have.html">Psalm 23 </a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2014/09/disney-philip-glass-opera-anne-and-i.html">Disney: a Philip Glass opera </a><br />
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<a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/falvetti-i-have-now-received-from.html">Falvetti and Il diluvio universale (Noah's flood)</a><br />
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<i>Just click to go there</i>
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JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063789667464572889.post-23375254963065664562019-09-09T03:35:00.001-07:002019-09-09T03:37:27.706-07:00A new Ingeborg Hallstein channel on Youtube with lots of videos<br> See <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7FOwKodP-bQCLYGyFoJ_oQ/videos">here</a>. Many of the videos are of her in her younger days.
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My favourite is her version of Frühlingsstimmen Walzer (Voices of Spring Waltz) by Johann Strauss. I will never be able to listen to anybody else's version now. See below:
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The owner of the channel is "megadim" (megadimih@gmail.com), who informs me that he has a lot more videos of her that he will put up in due course.
<br><br>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063789667464572889.post-42953751637002104292019-05-01T04:41:00.000-07:002020-05-31T19:50:29.767-07:00Moscow nights<br />
Moscow nights is a simple romantic song in which the singer relives the magic summer days of his youth when the world seemed fresh and love was in the air. I think most people are able to identify with it. I can. It reminds me of summer nights in 1968 when I was doing my M.A. at the University of Sydney and eating chicken Maryland at the Forest Lodge hotel -- in company with Michael Crowley, the wonderful Lesley Johnson and others
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Moscow nights has been much sung and recorded in the West so I think I am right about its popular appeal. It is a great favourite of mine so I think I will not be controverted if I say that the best performance of it was the famous performance in Red Square with Netrebko and Hvorostovsky singing. Anna Netrebko is a supreme soprano and Dmitry Hvorostovsky is a famous Russian baritone from (of all places) the industrial city of Krasnoyarsk in Siberia.<br />
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Hvorostovsky (sadly now prematurely deceased) was a very handsome and manly man so presented his songs in a very strong, confident and dignified way while Netrebko is a rather shy person who is easily embarrassed -- which leads to her being able to throw herself into her parts. She does not have to present her own personality so can be wholly devoted to expressing in every way what she is singing. And she does that very well.<br />
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I have come across a version of the Red Square performance that has both English subtitles and fairly good sound. <br />
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The beginning of the performance is very Russian, with Hvorostovsky dragging a submissive Netrebko onto the stage. In her reactions you will see how easily embarrassed she is but will also see how much she enjoys Hvorostovsky and his declarations. Most Russian ladies would envy her as Hvorostovsky is a very attractive man. Feminists will hate the whole thing.<br />
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If the embed does not come up you may have to click down the bottom where it says: YouTube<br />
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There is a version with better resolution and better sound here:<br />
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SwumVFUMBg <br />
but it is wholly in Russian<br />
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And look at the audience. They are our people. They are just like us. They could be an American audience. We MUST not have a war with Russia -- despite what Congress would seem to want. I have friends of Russian origin. If there were a war between Russia and the West I think I would kill myself to get out of a crazy world.<br />
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And here's an interesting footnote. Even the brilliant young Alma Deutscher has got into the act: In June 2018, the English teenage composer Alma Deutscher adapted the song for piano to entertain Russian President Vladimir Putin during a State Visit to Austria, at the request of Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. Given three days to arrange it, Deutscher started with a sad lament that transformed itself into a Viennese waltz. Kurz explained that the melding of the two musical styles illustrated well the bond of friendship between Austria and Russia.<br />
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JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063789667464572889.post-75222392348236925452019-04-10T00:28:00.000-07:002019-05-19T04:51:27.984-07:00The late Lawrence Auster 1949 – 2013
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By John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.)<br />
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<img src="http://www.jtl.org/auster/images/Auster2009b.jpg">
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<i>Auster</i><br>
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<i>Author of the blog "VIEW FROM THE RIGHT", Auster was a deeply conservative writer who often wrote on immigration and multiculturalism. Sadly he died all too soon. Conservatives tend to remember their honoured predecessors so I thought I should put up a small personal memoir about him. I therefore put up below largely unaltered versions of my posts about him in 2004</i>
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<b>Defining conservatism</b>
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I rarely comment on arguments put forward by my fellow conservatives, but I am going to make a small exception today to say a few words about the ideas of Lawrence Auster, a traditionalist Jewish writer who thinks that almost nobody these days is conservative enough. He has just put up on <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16266">Frontpage</a> an excellent article on the antiwar RIGHT ("The Antiwar Right's Bent View of the World") that I fully agree with and recommend. It no longer comes up on that site unfortunately but there appears to be a complete copy of it <a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1302525/posts">here</a> and <a href="https://foxhunt.blogspot.com/2004/12/#7295296278548960758">here</a>
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Auster <a href="http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/002881.html"> summarizes it</a> as follows:
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<blockquote> "The charge of “anger” has, of course, long been a liberal shibboleth used to label, belittle, and dismiss conservatives. This has especially been the case at the New York Times, where the word “anger” as applied to conservatives, both in headlines and the body of stories, would typically appear more often in the paper than “House of Representatives,” “poll,” or “gay.” It is classic politically correct propaganda, a way of portraying any non-liberal position as consisting of nothing but primitive impulses and dark prejudices. Since 9/11, however, the phenomenon of anger-driven politics, both on the left and the antiwar right, has ceased being a politically correct fantasy and has become an all-too-real, indeed formative element in our national politics that renders rational discussion almost impossible much of the time. As such it represents an extremely important development that needs to be understood in depth and resisted."</blockquote>
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Auster replies to a critique of it <a href="http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/002902.html">here</a>. and there is an updated and expanded version <a href="http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/017549.html">here</a>
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He also has an excellent article <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13894">here</a> (reproduced <a href="http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/002368.html">here</a>) that explains why American Jews are so overwhelmingly Left-wing. He says that they are actually AFRAID of American Protestant Christians, who are -- as Auster points out -- in fact the very best friends that Israel and the Jews have. Auster does not say so but I think the Jews concerned can be forgiven their paranoia. It is a pity that they are not more up to date but Christians (including Protestants such as Calvin and Luther) DID persecute them for a very long time.
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<br />Some other Auster articles of the many I could mention are ones complaining that the <a href="http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/000640.html">Pope is too Leftist</a> and that most <a href="http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/000605.html">modern conservatives are really Leftists</a>. He also thinks that the <a href="http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/001679.html">"neocons"</a> are a bad lot who have GWB in their hip-pocket and that America's largely <a href="http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/000637.html">open borders are a disaster</a>.
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<br />I of course agree with SOME of those other articles. I do think the whole <a href="http://jonjayray.com/rightism.html#1215">neocon conspiracy</a> thing is just paranoia but, as an Australian conservative I am delighted that our government has just about stopped illegal immigration stone dead and that it locks up any illegal immigrants it catches -- as it would anyone else who defies our laws. And I agree that the Holy Father, like most of his predecessors, is <a href="http://dissectleft.blogspot.com/2004_08_08_dissectleft_archive.html">not much of a conservative</a> politically.
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<br />My disagreements with Auster arise from the fact that I am one of those villains whom he sees as having destroyed conservatism -- libertarians. He rightly notes that libertarian conservatism is one of the dominant forms of conservatism today (the other being Christian conservatism) and makes the correct point that Christian conservatives are pretty strongly influenced by individualistic, liberty-oriented thinking too. Unlike Auster, however, I do not see this as a particularly modern phenomenon. I have done an extensive <a href="http://jonjayray.com/rightism.html">historical survey</a> showing that belief in individual liberty has always been central to conservatism. Auster, by contrast, seems to think that traditionalism is the main current. I actually see something more basic in conservatism that underlies both traditionalism AND belief in liberty -- a certain cautious pragmatism and mistrust of the goodwill of others. Because of this basic trait of caution, conservatives want as much freedom to make their own decisions as possible and they also like systems that have been tried and tested. But the liking for tradition is in the end just a tool -- a way of being cautious, not something that is compelling for its own sake.
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<br />So the basis of Auster's complaint is that modern conservatives are too liberty-oriented and value-free -- and he sees this as something that they have in common with the Left. A related complaint is that modern conservatives have no anchors -- they just go along with whatever seems to be working. The only thing I disagree with there is the idea that Leftists believe in liberty. They don't. They only believe in power. They advocate various liberties from time to time -- e.g. various sexual liberties -- mainly because it suits them as a way of disrupting existing society and thus hopefully getting themselves into power. But for the rest, I would claim that liberty and the good life are the only lasting values for secular conservatives and that going along with what seems to be working is the historic conservative <i>modus operandi</i>. And long may it continue! We have had more than enough of theorists telling us what to do!
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<br />I apologize to Auster for having to a degree caricaturized his views above but I was aiming only to give a quick impression of them. His own prolific writings give plenty of detail, explanation and nuance.
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<br />Auster made the following brief comment on my post above about his writings:
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<blockquote> "I thank Mr. Ray for his sympathetic and thoughtful overview of my writings. However, regarding his main criticism of me, I don't think I ever said that the belief in individual liberty was not part of the American conservative tradition. The difference is between those who understand liberty as being within a moral and constitutional order, and those who see liberty, or rather freedom, as essentially free of any constraints". <a href="http://ozconservative.blogspot.com/">Mark Richardson</a> is another writer who often makes that sort of point. I find such a view incomprehensible. I know of NO conservative who denies that "rights connote duties" and I know of NO conservative who denies that we are in at least some ways constrained in what we do by "human nature". So the claim that there are conservatives who believe in some sort of absolute liberty is a total straw man.</blockquote>
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So it would appear that the differences between Auster and other conservatives lay mainly in matters of emphasis</br>
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<b>Border control</b>
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Under the heading "Exposing the Open-Borders Arguments", Auster has a very comprehensive article <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=15475">here</a> (also <a href="http://www.mnforsustain.org/auster_l_exposing_open_border_arguments.htm">here</a>) arguing against America's current <i>de facto</i> policy of allowing millions of illegal immigrants to flow into the country. Australia has a high immigrant inflow too but we insist on choosing whom we allow in. As a result we mainly get high-quality (hard-working, law-abiding) immigrants from East Asia. We were getting a rash of illegal Muslim immigrants for a short while but Australia's conservative government put a stop to that -- to great public acclaim.
<br /><br /><b>Was Pope John Paul II a conservative?</b><br /><br />Auster has a heap of posts and comments up at the moment (e.g. <a href="http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/000640.html">here</a>) about the late Holy Father. Auster is derisive of the view that John Paul II was a conservative. But that depends on what you mean by conservative and Auster has <a href="http://dissectleft.blogspot.com/2004_12_19_dissectleft_archive.html#110339131904210824">his own view</a> of that. It is certainly clear that JPII was a political centrist but I think one could say much the same of GWB. So is GWB a conservative? NO! I can hear some people shouting. But no real-life politician wins universal approval even from his own side of politics so I think we have to say that in the ordinary meaning of the term GWB IS a conservative. <br /><br />From my own libertarian conservative viewpoint both GWB and JPII are/were not nearly conservative enough but I think that real-world conservative politics at least from Disraeli on have almost always consisted of finding a safe balance between competing political claims rather than pursuing some hard-line ideology. Hard-line ideologies are for Leftists. So I think Auster's view of the matter misses the point that JPII was of necessity a real-world politician -- so compromises were to be expected of him. Even my great hero, Ronald Reagan, signed into law some pieces of legislation I would rather not think about. <br /><br />What I think Auster also misses is that political centrism is thoroughly Papal. The attitudes of JPII were simply modern adaptations of traditional Papal thinking. I go into that at slightly greater length <a href="http://dissectleft.blogspot.com/2004_08_08_dissectleft_archive.html#109243276243663513">here</a>. Papal thinking is in fact the ancestor of the Blairite "third way". The syndicalism that was recommended in the famous 1891 encyclical <i>De rerum novarum</i> of Pope Leo XIII also tried to strike a balance between capitalism and socialism. <br /><br />Update: I guess I should mention explicitly something I initially thought was too well-known to require comment: That there was one respect in which His Holiness was NOT a centrist -- his stand in favour of individual rights versus the power of the Communist State. So in that respect he was very much a conservative, and a great one.<br /><br />
<b>Winston Churchill <i>was</i> a neocon</b><br /><br />I am sometimes amazed by how little history even my fellow conservatives seem to know. Lawrence Auster is of course well-known for the way he agrees with Leftists in his paranoia about the "neocons" so I guess that helps us understand his latest lapse. He has put up a post consisting mainly of a letter from an historian claiming that <a href="http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/003249.html#postcomment">Winston Churchill was NOT a neocon</a>. In the narrow sense that Churchill was not Jewish and that the term "neocon" is only a recent invention, that does, of course, have to be true. <br /><br />In the broader sense -- a neocon being a former Leftist who favours foreign military intervention in favour of democracy -- however, to say that Churchill was not a neocon betrays no knowledge of history whatever. He joined the British LIBERAL party in 1904 and served as Colonial Under-Secretary under Campbell-Bannerman and as president of the Board of Trade and Home Secretary under Asquith. So he was in his early years a prominent Leftist in terms of British politics at the time. But, like the neocons, he later (1925) changed his tune and became a prominent Conservative. <br /><br />And as for foreign interventions in favour of democracy, who was Secretary of War under Lloyd George when Britain sent troops to join the "white" Russians in fighting the Bolsheviks in 1919? It was Winston Churchill! And there is no doubt that Churchill did not repent doing so. One thing he never changed was his fierce opposition to Communism -- an opposition that is also characteristic of the neocons. <br /><br />And though Churchill was not Jewish, he was at least philosemitic. As Auster notes, Churchill once said: "Where the Jew goes there is oasis. Where the Arab goes there is desert." <br /><br />So on the four primary neocon identifiers -- Jewishness, anticommunism, Leftist early life and support for military intervention in the cause of promoting democracy -- Churchill scores 3 out of 4 -- and on the Jewishness angle he might be said to have done his best! I gather that not all neocons are Jewish anyway -- particularly if you include the Straussians in what is after all a pretty loose classification to begin with. Some people also say Churchill was a neocon because he was an unabashed defender of the British Empire but for that to be relevant we have to accept that the neocons want an American empire -- which is in my view a brain-dead claim. The idea of America as an empire is antithetical to all American values and traditions and the neocons are far too smart to be unaware of something as basic as that.<br /><br />Auster does not link to it but the article which started the recent discussion about Churchill as a neocon is <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9503E7DD103AF934A15751C0A9639C8B63">here</a><br /> <br />
<b>Paleocons</b>
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<br /><a href="http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/002902.html">Auster on Paleocons</a>: Auster is a pretty old-fashioned conservative himself so his critique of the "paleocons" (who as far as I can see are in fact largely anarcho-capitalists rather than any sort of conservative) got a bit of a reaction. Such internecine feuds are normally of little interest to me but this particular feud involves <a href="http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/002902.html">criticism of "psychologizing"</a>. The claim is that one should look only at the argument someone is advancing rather than their motivation for making the argument. That is of course the classic critique of "ad hominem" arguments but in cases when an argument makes no sense at the logical level, I think you have to look at the psychological motivation. It is of course my contention that Leftism can ONLY be understood as a psychological rather than a rational phenomenon. Leftist arguments are so inconsistent from occasion to occasion that one has to look at what is behind such a strange phenomenon. So I am on Auster's side in this one. There is of course an argument against speculative or "pop" psychologizing but my 200+ published academic journal articles on political psychology insulate me fairly well from that charge. I do not however rely on any claims of authority to substantiate what I say about Leftist psychology. I do what all scientists do (or should do): <a href="http://jonjayray.com/rightism.html">Present evidence</a> for what I say. And again, I think Auster does a fair job of substantiating his points in that way.
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<b>"Moderate" Muslims?</b>
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<br /><a href="http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/002907.html">Auster</a> says that there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim. He is wrong. One of the major religious leaders (and a former Prime Minister) of the world's largest Muslim country is actually pro-Israel. And I'll bet Lawrence does not even know whom I am talking about. That there is no such thing as a moderate ARAB Muslim I might tend to agree with, however. No doubt there are some decent Arabs but they seem to be vastly outnumbered by others whom I can only call disgusting.
<br /><br />It is very encouraging to see <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060215035514/http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007743">an article by Abdurrahman Wahid in the WSJ</a> which sets out the urgency of defeating Islamic extremism. Better known as Gus Dur, Wahid is of course arguably the most respected religious leader in the world's most populous Islamic nation -- Indonesia. As Indonesia is on Australia's doorstep, many politically aware Australians are rather appreciative of Gus Dur and his moderation.<br />
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*There is a comprehensive list of Auster's writings <a href="http://www.jtl.org/auster/">here</a>
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JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063789667464572889.post-72423491633259111562019-03-30T15:04:00.000-07:002019-05-19T17:56:46.178-07:00Breuer chairs and I
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<i>With a nod to bentwood chairs</i>
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It all began with bentwood. Around a century ago, people discovered that when you put wood in a steamer, you could bend it into all sorts of shapes without it splintering. A practical use of that was to make lightweight chairs. And bentwood chairs were very fashionable in the early 20th century<br />
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<img height="500" src="https://i.etsystatic.com/7152256/r/il/c04b35/1455596599/il_1588xN.1455596599_lutw.jpg" width="400" /><br />
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But what should you use for the seat? To keep the chair light rattan was a popular option. British colonialists came across it in Malaya where the rattan plant grows prolifically -- and it is light but strong -- so woven rattan was well known at the time, as you see above. So rattan was also favoured for the seat of Breuer chairs when they arrived<br />
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Breuer is the German word for brewer so the chairs are also called brewer chairs. They come from the Bauhaus architectual movement of Germany in the 1920s and 30s -- self-consciously innovative. And they are in fact a bit mad. Innovativeness that leads to no back support!<br />
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Aside from looking rather stylish, they are very light: Strong steel tubing plus Rattan seats and backrest. So they have some practicality. They looked very fragile however so the vogue for them did not last long.<br />
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<img height="600" src="https://cdn10.bigcommerce.com/s-vj3z71/products/538/images/1298/Marcel_Breuer_Chair_Side_Honey_Oak_Cane_2014B__37660.1439536683.1280.1280.jpg?c=2" width="400" /><br />
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Anyhow they had some revival in Australia about 30 years ago. And I bought 8 of them!<br />
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As with bentwood chairs before them, however, the seat of the Breuer chairs tended to fail, with a big hole left in the middle. And that is the reason why if you see any bentwood chairs around these days you will see that the seat has been covered with a layer of 3-ply -- not elegant any more but at least usable<br />
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I did not pay a lot for my Breuer chairs however -- they came in a flatpack -- so when they failed I did not bother to save them but just threw them out. And I was down to 3 of them left when a tenant moved out of one of my properties and left another 3 behind. They too had obviously concluded that they were not much good. So I now had 6 Breuer chairs again.<br />
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They continued to fail however and I continued to throw them out. But I also found a couple at charity shops so restocked a little there. <br />
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When I was down to 5 chairs however, I had a rethink. As lightweight chairs they were rather handy and they looked rather interesting so I decided to do what the earlier generation had done with their bentwood chairs. When I was growing up, ALL the bentwood chairs I saw had had their seats repaired with plywood. So I stopped throwing my Breuer chairs out and repaired their seats with plywood. And I even have two with the original seats.<br />
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And when the council had one of their rubbish disposal weeks recently, I spied a complete set of them put out by the side of the road. So I took them in. That lot however has upholstered seats so that may be why they lasted better. So why did the owners chuck them out? Maybe they thought the upholstered seats were looking a bit fragile. I guess I will find out.<br />
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But, anyway, after about 30 years, I once again have 8 Breuer chairs.<br />
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JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063789667464572889.post-80764912121514081352019-01-24T15:10:00.000-08:002019-05-19T17:58:40.195-07:00A procedure and T.S. Eliot
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I went in on afternoon of 23rd to the Wesley with a 3:30 appointment for a colonoscopy. There was a fear that I might have bowel cancer. My father died of that at age 65.<br />
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The preliminary literature that the hospital sent out was mostly of little interest but I liked one piece of advice they gave. It said "There may be delays so take a book". And I did. I had for years been meaning to read "The cocktail party" by T.S. Eliot and I did own a copy so took it along. It was good that I did as it was in fact 3 hours late -- 6:30 -- that I was wheeled into theatre. I had in fact just finished reading the play shortly before that so it fitted in well.<br />
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It is a good play. It is about people coming to terms with the ordinariness of their lives. It is an English drawing room play much like Agatha Christie's novels and there is in fact a substantial "who dun it" element in it. But the over-riding theme is the actors talking about their feelings. So it is a sort of psychological "who dun it". There is a famous quote in it that I have known for some time: <br />
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"Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm -- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves." <br />
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Eliot wrote that as a comment on interpersonal relations, highlighting how that thinking distorts and destroys relationships. I also see it as a comment on Leftism. The Leftist too is always trying to puff himself up as better than he is. "Virtue signalling" is the modern term for it. "I am better than you" is the basic message. Toxic!<br />
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It's possible that Eliot did mean it politically too, as he was a conservative<br />
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Eliot's famous poem <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/44212/the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock">"Prufrock"</a> also portrays the ordinariness of English life and reflects on what to do about it. As such it is rather dismal piece of work but is nonetheless important and famous. It does have some good lines in it (e.g. "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons") and it seems clear to me what it is all about -- though there are various versions of that. A stream of consciousness poem does lend itself to various interpretations. My interpretation is that it is the young and frustrated T.S. Eliot bemoaning his inability to understand and get on with women. The epigraph in the poem is from <a href="https://unisophomoreenglish.wordpress.com/2017/03/01/translation-of-the-epigraph-in-prufrock/">Dante</a> so Prufrock is apparently speaking from Hell, metaphorically<br />
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Anyway, the colonoscopy was a great success. There was no cancer and only two polyps were found and zapped. Only two polyps in a man of 75 is very much at the upper end of desirability. So I was allowed to go immediately back on to a normal diet, which I did. <br />
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JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063789667464572889.post-35282485989792092252018-12-11T15:14:00.000-08:002020-05-31T19:56:27.201-07:00Why a great Protestant hymn breaks my heart
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I don't know if I will be able to convey what is after all a feeling but I cannot listen to the original version of the great Lutheran hymn "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" (A mighty fortress is our God) without being upset.<br />
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The hymn is now best known in the marvellous setting by J.S. Bach -- a supreme work of musical art -- so we usually overlook the original hymn. Both the original work and the Bach setting are works expressing Christian triumph over evil and adversity but in the original version you get a feeling for what Christians of hundreds of years ago had to triumph over. <br />
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The world they lived in was full of tragedy, hardship and disaster and they attributed it all to demons and the Devil himself. To them the Devil was real and powerful and present in their lives. They saw his cruel deeds all about them on a daily basis -- in sickness and death and disaster. There are few things, if any, more upsetting than the death of a child but they had to endure such deaths often.<br />
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So what the hymn conveys to me is both how awful their lives were and how their Christian faith gave them the heart to power on. Their faith was their only rock, their only comfort. They had no power to combat the evils around them. It cuts me up that they had so little power over their lives when we have so much. Their survival truly is a wonder.<br />
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But I have said as much as I can. Just listen to the starkly simple words of a very simple hymn and feel for those poor people.<br />
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<iframe width="440" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_itd4gQMzxM" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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The words:
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<img src="https://i.imgur.com/ZrElZsK.png">
<img src="https://i.imgur.com/04XCNAU.png">
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As students of foreign languages always tell you, you cannot adequately translate a poem and that is certainly so here. The song is even more powerful in the original German: Simple punchy words<br />
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The words: <i>"Gut, Ehr, Kind und Weib: lass fahren dahin"</i> are not well translated above. They say that your possessions, your honour, your child and your wife can all be lost but the Devil still has not triumphed. What tragedies they had to expect!<br />
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And now listen to the wonderful things Bach did with that ultra-simple hymn:<br />
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="250" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YQOJzjz7pwY" width="420"></iframe><br />
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Bach had joy in the Christian triumph over the Devil<br />
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Footnote: The images in the video are of various castles in the German lands
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<br />JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063789667464572889.post-20374489440153799232018-12-08T15:27:00.000-08:002020-05-31T19:53:03.314-07:00Campbell & Hauser -- string virtuosi
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I put these two remarkable performers together because they put themselves together. They give joint concerts which they clearly enjoy greatly.
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Stepan Hauser, from Croatia, seems to have single-handedly revived interest in the cello as a solo instrument. The great power of the cello is very engrossing and emotionally moving so it deserves more prominence. The great champion of the cello for a time was Jacqueline du Pré but, sadly, she is now long gone -- so it is good to see a successor emerging<br />
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American violinist Caroline Campbell: One expects lady violinists to look rather dowdy but Campbell in the opposite. She is a real glamor girl -- who also happens to be mistress of the violin while also being a most expressive interpreter of what she plays. Watching her play is very easy on the eye.<br />
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Below are some videos, first a popular duet between Hauser and Campbell. They play the popular song "Return to Sorrento", which just about everyone should be able to get with<br />
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Jo4fRy4zGK4" width="420"></iframe><br />
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"Torna a Surriento" is a Neapolitan song composed in 1902 by Italian musician Ernesto De Curtis to words by his brother, the poet and painter Giambattista De Curtis.<br />
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English translation ("Come Back to Sorrento")<br />
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Look at the sea, how beautiful it is,<br />
it inspires so many emotions,<br />
like you do with the people you look at,<br />
who you make to dream while they are still awake.<br />
Look at this garden<br />
and the scent of these oranges,<br />
such a fine perfume,<br />
it goes straight into your heart,<br />
And you say: "I am leaving, goodbye."<br />
You go away from this heart of mine,<br />
away from this land of love,<br />
And you have the heart not to come back.<br />
But do not go away,<br />
do not give me this pain.<br />
Come back to Surriento,<br />
let me live!<br />
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Then there is a duet in which Hauser and Campbell do a Hungarian Csardas -- which starts out slow and ends very fast. They both handle even the fastest notes effortlessly and with great panache.<br />
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Sk2yoOY8CTU" width="420"></iframe><br />
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I think this performance might be my favourite classical music performance. Both players really live the music and in addition to the lady being both an excellent artist and a good humoured person she is such a dish. We men are allowed to admire the female form. The human race would rapidly grind to a halt if we did not.<br />
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The venue for the performance appears to be the Arena Pula in Croatia, the best preserved Roman amphitheatre<br />
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There are some good pictures of Campbell in a variety of settings <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-6317135/Caroline-Campbell-spotted-KISSING-new-man-romantic-date-shes-married.html">here</a><br />
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And just to show that Hauser takes his cello everywhere:
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<iframe width="642" height="361" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AzWDs26YL9Y" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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Note those heels! Lola Astanova is an Uzbek from Tashkent and when you are an Uzbek, you need a gimmick to get attention. She has succeeded. And she is a genuinely gifted pianist as well
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JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063789667464572889.post-41684872839662492562018-12-01T02:50:00.000-08:002019-04-12T05:05:04.333-07:00Woofing<br />
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I have recently installed a sub-woofer on my computer so I tried it out with Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, a work using a lot of bass. It performed faultlessly, to my pleasure. Below is the work concerned.<br />
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ho9rZjlsyYY" width="420"></iframe><br />
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The organist is the late Hannes Kästner on the great cathedral organ of St. Steven at Passau in Bavaria. The German lands are truly the lands of music. https://youtu.be/ho9rZjlsyYY <br />
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JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063789667464572889.post-44641435105568679732018-10-01T03:22:00.001-07:002019-05-17T00:07:49.419-07:00The Tilt Train has been nobbled<br /><br>
<img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/City_of_Rockhampton_train_%28Sunshine_railway_station%2C_Brisbane%29.jpg/300px-City_of_Rockhampton_train_%28Sunshine_railway_station%2C_Brisbane%29.jpg">
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The Tilt Train doesn't tilt any more. That's one of the most glaring proofs of how the super cautious bureaucrats at Queensland Rail have totally misused one of the few trains that they could have been proud of. It is one of the few bits of "modern" (it is 20 years old) technology that could have given passengers a modern journey time.<br />
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It chugs along at a speed averaging about 80 kmh versus the 160 kmh it is routinely capable of. It goes a little faster than the old "Sunlander" but the "Sunlander" was REALLY slow. You could have walked faster at some points on it.<br />
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Do the sums yourself: The Tilt Train does the 615 km from Brisbane to Rockhampton in 7.5 hours -- which averages out at 82 kmh -- or 51 mph in the old money. Highway traffic goes faster than that. Allowing half an hour for stops still brings the average speed up to only 87 kmh<br />
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And that slow speed is why the train doesn't tilt any more. The whole point of Tilting technology is so it can go faster. The train does not have to slow down so much as it goes around curves. It leans into curves the way a motorbike would. But the Tilt Train goes so slowly around curves that it has no need to tilt. It handles curves in the track the same way the old "Sunlander" did -- by slowing to a crawl.<br />
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On my recent trip from Brisbane to Rockhampton, there were a few spots when the train showed something of what it can do and that was rather exciting but they never lasted for long.<br />
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Perhaps the most extraordinary example of excess bureaucratic caution was the way the train slowed to a crawl for an urban level crossing. With red lights flashing and a boom gate down, Queensland motorists can still cross rail tracks at will. In most of the world you risk your life by ignoring crossing warnings but not so in urban Queensland. The train goes so slowly that the driver could probably stop in time rather than run into you. The bureaucrats ensure that NOTHING will generate negative publicity for their train.<br />
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On my trip the train even came to a full stop for 15 minutes to deal with an ill passenger. I have no idea how that helped. I suspect regulations again.<br />
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So why are Queenslanders in the grip of bureaucrats who completely misuse their best asset? I suspect it goes back to the time when the Tilt Train did tilt. But it can only tilt so far. And in 2004 BOTH drivers were too busy noshing to slow the train down when it entered a curve. So they sent the train through a curve at twice the recommended speed. It of course crashed.<br />
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So what was clearly needed were computerized speed limiters. Queensland Rail in fact did install such a system but to be super cautious they just slowed the whole train down forever. A very bureaucratic and unintelligent response. They can now enjoy their coffee breaks without a care in the world.<br />
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I must however give credit where it is due. The food aboard is remarkably good for railway food. Their chef clearly knows what he is doing. The hot food came around hot and the cold food around came cold. And the prices are very reasonable, though the portions are rather small. And the food carts come around with great frequency, perhaps to take the minds of passengers off the painful progress of their train. I am guessing that the food supply is the only thing outsourced to private enterprise. What might upset international visitors, however, is that they only take cash. Remember that stuff? Credit cards are not accepted.<br />
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JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063789667464572889.post-39266542286438947242018-09-21T02:57:00.000-07:002019-04-12T05:32:03.776-07:00A new favourite pianist
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I listen to quite as lot of music on video -- mostly classical. And the piano is of course a big part of that. So it is a very pleasant discovery for me to come across a new artist -- new to me anyway. Up until recently my favourite pianist was Yuja Wang, a gift to us all from Beijing. I have just in the last few days got to hear the playing of Alice Sara Ott, from Germany. Her mother was Japanese so she is rather tiny in build but quite pretty. <br />
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I have heard quite a few pieces by her but the one that gets to me most is Beethoven's 3rd Piano concerto. https://youtu.be/PM0HqmptYlY Her timing is exquisite. Below she joins with the French national radio orchestra in Paris under a Finnish conductor.<br />
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<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="250" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PM0HqmptYlY" width="420"></iframe><br />
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Before her the pianist I was listening to most was Yuja Wang. She is quite amazing playing Schubert. I know the words and story for quite a few Schubert Lieder and listening to Wang play I could swear she has the words in her head too. Her playing exactly reflects the poem concerned. Below is an example of that most dramatic Lied <i>Der Erlkoenig</i> -- set to a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe<br />
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<iframe width="600" height="350" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4_BmRekeJ8A" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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The Erl-King https://youtu.be/4_BmRekeJ8A
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<br />
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe<br />
<br />
Who's riding so late where winds blow wild <br />
It is the father grasping his child; <br />
He holds the boy embraced in his arm, <br />
He clasps him snugly, he keeps him warm.<br />
<br />
"My son, why cover your face in such fear?" <br />
"You see the elf-king, father? <br />
He's near! The king of the elves with crown and train!" <br />
"My son, the mist is on the plain."<br />
<br />
'Sweet lad, o come and join me, do! <br />
Such pretty games I will play with you; <br />
On the shore gay flowers their color unfold, <br />
My mother has many garments of gold.'<br />
<br />
"My father, my father, and can you not hear <br />
The promise the elf-king breathes in my ear?" <br />
"Be calm, stay calm, my child, lie low: <br />
In withered leaves the night-winds blow."<br />
<br />
'Will you, sweet lad, come along with me? <br />
My daughters shall care for you tenderly; <br />
In the night my daughters their revelry keep, <br />
They'll rock you and dance you and sing you to sleep.'<br />
<br />
"My father, my father, o can you not trace <br />
The elf-king's daughters in that gloomy place?" <br />
"My son, my son, I see it clear <br />
How grey the ancient willows appear."<br />
<br />
'I love you, your comeliness charms me, my boy! <br />
And if you're not willing, my force I'll employ.' <br />
"Now father, now father, he's seizing my arm. <br />
Elf-king has done me a cruel harm."<br />
<br />
The father shudders, his ride is wild, <br />
In his arms he's holding the groaning child, <br />
Reaches the court with toil and dread. - <br />
The child he held in his arms was dead.<br />
<br />
<br />
And before that I was most often listening to Emil Gilels, a Ukrainian pianist from the Soviet era -- playing Beethoven's 5th concerto, "The Emperor". Its beauty still moves me to tears<br />
<br />
<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="250" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/i9v0za1SZAs" width="420"></iframe><br /><br />
https://youtu.be/i9v0za1SZAs
<br />
<br />
JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063789667464572889.post-63048910867120372522018-06-22T06:34:00.003-07:002019-04-12T05:38:27.093-07:00"Trim Taut & Terrific"<br />
Have you used that expression? I use it to describe (say) an athletic young woman. But if you Google it you will find it as a description of a lot of things. So where does that phrase come from? I know but seeing nobody else seem to know, I thought I had better put it online.<br />
<br />
Back in the 60's, when a lot of people went rather mad (I was there!), there was a washing machine manufacturer in South Australia called Lightburn. Eventually however they got bored with making washing machines and had dreams of making a motor car. And they did -- using their washing machine factory for the purpose. It was called the Lightburn Zeta. It seems to have been inspired by East Germany's Trabant. Maybe Mr Lightburn was a Communist. About 400 of them were made<br />
<br />
Any way the Zeta gave the Trabant a run for its money for flimsiness. Though it was at least mainly made of steel rather than the plastic of the Trabant. It was very small and powered by two stroke motors, presumably bought in from some motorbike manufacturer. But it was a very light vehicle so a motorbike motor could push it along.<br />
<br />
It's most amazing feature was that it had no reverse gear. To reverse it you had to stop the motor and then start it again. So that gave you four reverse gears. I did tell you this was the 60s!<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3W1mgK0xtlfi1N8yoVQwgW_BKakeZQpFI-S1IeZYQfzi64Dr52ZCfxlWw7QkZqLvJ6CdZU-KpAiEyS34TmJrDX1AlISLfhTJbH5yO70aAFzNbTwwYQawPSJpDSllus0DkB2ujngTN-1E/s1600/zeta.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3W1mgK0xtlfi1N8yoVQwgW_BKakeZQpFI-S1IeZYQfzi64Dr52ZCfxlWw7QkZqLvJ6CdZU-KpAiEyS34TmJrDX1AlISLfhTJbH5yO70aAFzNbTwwYQawPSJpDSllus0DkB2ujngTN-1E/s1600/zeta.jpg" data-original-width="239" data-original-height="211" /></a>
<br />
<br />
Anyway, there was really only one good thing about it: The advertising slogan. Somehow their advertising agency had a stroke of inspiration and described the Zeta as everyhing it was not: "Trim Taut & Terrific". And that then took off as a description of many things<br />
<br />
Even the Wikipedia entry on the Zeta does not know of its slogan so it is sort of lucky that it has stuck in my aged brain -- probably because I thought it was hilarious from the beginning.<br />
<br />
I would add the information to the Wikipedia entry except that they always wipe everything I put up. They have got a whole team of "editors' who seem to spend all their time wiping entries they regard as "unsuitable". I will probably add this post to <a href="http://jrwik.blogspot.com/">my personal Wikipedia</a>. My personal Wikipedia has lot of information about operetta that is not elsewhere available in English but it was still not good enough for Wikipedia<br />
<br />
A final note: You will find <a href="https://www.domain.com.au/news/trim-taut-and-terrific-20121030-28gp2/">here</a> a description of something that is said to be "Trim Taut & Terrific" but also "small, but perfectly formed". That is a rather weird combination. "Small, but perfectly formed" was originally a description of Alexander the Great -- a Greek King from about 300 BC<br />
<br />JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063789667464572889.post-85266885205819450942018-04-12T03:00:00.000-07:002019-05-20T05:16:53.070-07:00Emotional music
<br />
<br />
I spent some time listening to some wonderful songs last night<br />
<br />
First was Leonid Kharitonov singing "Volga Boatman" with the Red Army Choir. The song is actually a type of shanty. It is not the song of sailors, however. It is a song of men on a towpath dragging boats along the Volga, presumably upstream. It is a song of endurance. As such the words are simple to the point of meaninglessness but the tune is compelling. And when you see Kharitonov -- a most manly looking man -- you get a feeling for Russian power. <br />
<br />
Russians are enduring. They have to be -- with both a demanding climate and a demanding government. I admire them and have a feeling for what life must be like in Russia. When you listen to Kharitinov, however, you begin to understand the war on the Eastern front. The Germans were military specialists and killed 4 Russians for every one of theirs that fell. But the Russians just did not give in -- so indomitability triumphed over military brilliance. The clip below is from the Soviet era<br />
<br />
<iframe width="481" height="361" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5wDai9s4Hmc" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br />
<br />
A version without the introduction here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNb54rwDQJM
<br />
<br />
Then I watched an excellent version of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, played by an American army band. It was a very sophisticated performance in my language by people of my ethnicity referring to my religious heritage but I was nevertheless a little uncomfortable with it. I was disturbed by the women in the band, including the very capable woman conductor. In my old-fashioned military mind, we fight to protect our women, not put them in the army. A nation that puts its mothers in danger has lost the plot and endangered its future in my view.<br />
<br />
<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Jy6AOGRsR80?list=RDMMDtT62uw2LGE" width="420"></iframe><br />
<br />
Then I watched a very well done version of Hatikva, the national anthem of Israel. I am hugely pro-Israel so that moved me. When they sing about Jerusalem that is not just their religious capital but it is ours too. Their Bible is our Bible too. So we too have learnt to yearn for Zion.<br />
<br />
<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lMwSlp7I7IQ" width="420"></iframe><br />
<br />
Then there was a rendition of the simple but beloved Russian folk song: Katyusha. With a lively little Russian girl (Valeria Kurnushkina) drawn in to sing her part. The Choir with their big hats sang happily along with her. She was a charmer.<br />
<br />
<iframe width="481" height="361" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kmh9TDuLU5g" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br />
<br />
And then I went to a magnificent rendition in the Albert hall of that great English song "Jerusalem". Blake's magical words and Parry's setting are incomparable. Anybody with English blood in them (and I am one) has to glorify in that song despite it's vast theological improbability. I liked some of the comments left on the video. I felt that way too:<br />
<br />
<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/041nXAAn714" width="420"></iframe><br />
<br />
<i>The comments:</i><br />
<br />
Thank God I was born an Englishman!!<br />
<br />
For starters I hardly ever cry, but this almost brought a tear to my eye. Were so proud of you from across the pond, sending lots of love and wishes of luck on your new journey of independence.<br />
<br />
I don't give a toss about what people say or think about my country, I'm a proud Englishman and that will never change<br />
<br />
Amazing! Wish i was british. In germany it's a crime to love your own country.<br />
<br />
Almost cried when I heard Jerusalem today and I'm not even British. I truly wish a bright future and only the best for England and for the whole UK.<br />
<br />
God save the Queen from sweden .<br />
<br />
If you happen to be a free citizen anywhere on this planet, believe it or not, you are indebted to England. By the way i am not British and not among the fortunate ones.<br />
<br />
Being born English is like winning the first prize in the lottery of life.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063789667464572889.post-61239000961059983382016-10-24T05:06:00.000-07:002019-05-19T22:51:01.247-07:00More wonderful singing from Anna Netrebko<br />
<br />
I have of course over the years heard many renditions of "O mio babbino caro" from Gianni Schicchi by Giacomo Puccini. It would go close to being Puccini's best aria. So I was pleased to see two versions of it by Netrebko. And I think she is the best yet at it in my judgment. This performance from the <i>Waldbuehne</i> outside Berlin<br />
<br />
<iframe width="420" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5ib5rmF3B2M" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br />
<br />
But that's not the end of it. She did another version of it that is now online. I suspect she is a little older in this version. It is however a bit hard to tell. She was fairly informally presented in the first version, with very little makeup on. In this version, however she has the full slap on. It does look very elegant and romantic.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="280" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/g0Kcg7WEJME" width="420"></iframe><br />
<br />
<br />
It's interesting that Netrebko looks quite Italian in this performance. Since the whole song is set in Firenze (Florence) -- with references to the Ponte Vecchio, the Arno etc -- that is very appropriate. Netrebko is from Southern Russia -- Cossack country -- so she probably comes from a latitude nearly as Southerly as Firenze.<br />
<br />
<br />JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063789667464572889.post-79853230412501289292016-09-23T03:45:00.001-07:002018-06-22T06:44:24.911-07:00A marvellous rendition of Meine Lippen, die küssen so heiss by a young Anna Netrebko<br />
<br />
<i>From Giuditta (Judith) by Franz Lehar</i><br />
<br />
<iframe width="420" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eGiz_QWCEkU" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br />
<br />
I know this song well in a performance by the gorgeous Natalia Ushakova. Ushakova is good but she can't beat the passion Netrebko puts into this performance. The singer is supposed to be half-mad and Netrebko conveys that<br />
<br />
Netrebko seems in fact to be particularly associated with that aria. She has certainly recorded it often. And like the great thespian she is, she has done it in a number of ways. With the Proms performance being particularly jolly. But the above performance is truest to the plot of the operetta.<br />
<br />
And I know what she likes about that aria. It gives her great opportunity to show what she can do. Grand opera is very boring. People are either dying or about to die. In Carmen he kills his lover and in Aida the lovers get immured. How ghastly! But it is much jollier in operatta. Guiditta is undoubtedly the darkest of the operettas but in the end the reunited lovers just acknowledge one another and go their separate ways. So this aria gives Netrebko scope to show what she can do. It allows all sorts of expression -- which she delivers brilliantly.<br />
<br />
When? When and where was the aria recorded? It was recorded on 7 July 2006 in a grand concert with Placido Domingo, Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazon at the Waldbühne ("Forest Stage") near Berlin -- before a huge audience of 20,000. Germans like their music and this aria was after all in German.<br />
<br />
<br />JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063789667464572889.post-56933881638062593122016-08-15T20:24:00.003-07:002020-05-31T20:18:45.113-07:00Pergolesi and Sabina Puértolas<br />
I came across a new video of a great favourite -- Pergolesi's "Stabat Mater" just recently. It is the best rendition I have heard and I have heard many. See and hear below:<br />
<br />
The way the soprano threw herself into it was truly impressive. Never has "pertansivit gladius" been sung with greater passion. Sadly, whoever put the video up gave no information about it. So I had to do a bit of digging to find out all about it. But I did in the end find this:<br />
<br />
"Accompanied by the French musical ensemble Les Talens Lyriques, Spanish soprano Sabina Puértolas and American mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux perform Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater. It is composed in 1736, in the final weeks of Pergolesi’s short life (4 January 1710 – 16 March 1736), and scored for soprano and alto soloists, violin I and II, viola and basso continuo (cello and organ). Conductor: Christophe Rousset"<br />
<br />
The performance seems to have been in April this year. In Spain, Ms Puértolas is not Spanish. She is Aragonese (from Aragon, ancient Aragon). There is an artistic history of her <a href="http://www.maxinerobertson.com/content/artists/documents/sp-bio.pdf">here</a>, which shows her as a very busy singer -- so she is obviously widely appreciated. I tried to find out some personal history, even trawling through the notices in Italian, but could not find a thing.<br />
<br />
I may have to take more notice of Spanish singers. I was greatly impressed by the performance of Evelyn Ramirez Munoz as the divine voice in the premiere version of Falvetti's "Il Diluvio universale". Munoz is a Spanish surname so I assume Ms Munoz is Spanish but you can never be sure these days. Argentinian? See below:<br />
<br />
<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FjJ02agjjdo" width="420"></iframe>
<br />
I note that there is another rendering of the Falvetti just out and she seems to have grabbed her old role in the latest version as well. See below. She is the lady in black.<br />
<br />
<iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZOE2A-A6yfs" width="640"></iframe>
<br />
I guess that by Northern European standards she over-acts but in singing a work from Sicily, what the hell?<br />
<div>
<br />
<br />
Stabat Mater dolorosa<br />
Iuxta crucem lacrimosa<br />
Dum pendebat Filius.<br />
<br />
The grieving Mother<br />
stood weeping beside the cross<br />
where her Son was hanging.<br />
<br />
Cuius animam gementem<br />
Contristatam et dolentem<br />
Pertransivit gladius.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<br />
Through her weeping soul,<br />
compassionate and grieving,<br />
a sword passed.<br />
<br />
O quam tristis et afflicta<br />
Fuit illa benedicta<br />
Mater unigeniti!<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<br />
O how sad and afflicted<br />
was that blessed Mother<br />
of the only-begotten!<br />
<br />
Quae moerebat et dolebat,<br />
Pia Mater, dum videbat<br />
Nati poenas incliti.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<br />
Who mourned and grieved,<br />
seeing and bearing the torment<br />
of her glorious child.<br />
<br />
Quis est homo qui non fleret,<br />
Matrem Christi si videret<br />
In tanto supplicio?<br />
<br />
Who is it that would not weep,<br />
seeing Christ’s Mother<br />
in such agony?<br />
<br />
Vidit suum dulcem natum<br />
Moriendo desolatum<br />
Dum emisit spiritum.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<br />
She saw her sweet child<br />
die desolate,<br />
as he gave up His spirit.<br />
<br />
Eja Mater, fons amoris<br />
Me sentire vim doloris<br />
Fac, ut tecum lugeam.<br />
<br />
O Mother, fountain of love,<br />
make me feel the power of sorrow,<br />
that I may grieve with you.<br />
<br />
Fac, ut ardeat cor meum<br />
In amando Christum Deum<br />
Ut sibi complaceam.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<br />
Grant that my heart may burn<br />
in the love of Christ my God,<br />
that I may greatly please Him.<br />
<br />
Sancta Mater, istud agas,<br />
Crucifixi fige plagas<br />
cordi meo valide.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<br />
Holy Mother, may you do thus:<br />
place the wounds of the Crucified<br />
deep in my heart.<br />
<br />
Fac ut portem Christi mortem,<br />
passionis fac consortem,<br />
et plagas recolere.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<br />
Make me to bear Christ's death,<br />
sharing in His passion,<br />
and commemorate his wounds.<br />
<br />
Inflammatus et accensus<br />
per te, Virgo, sim defensus<br />
in die iudicii.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<br />
Inflame and set on fire,<br />
may I be defended by you, Virgin,<br />
on the day of judgment.<br />
<br />
Fac me cruce custodiri<br />
morte Christi praemuniri<br />
confoveri gratia.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<br />
Let me be guarded by the cross,<br />
armed by Christ's death<br />
and His cherished by His grace.<br />
<br />
Quando corpus morietur,<br />
fac ut animæ donetur<br />
Paradisi gloria. Amen.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<br />
When my body dies,<br />
grant that to my soul is given<br />
the glory<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063789667464572889.post-24313800674126962102016-07-21T20:50:00.001-07:002020-01-19T05:15:32.457-08:00Dr Gordon Lavelle Mangan (1924 - ): A biographical note
<br />
<i>Ian Hills and I both did our first degrees in the Dept. of Psychology at the University of Queensland in the '60s and both of us found Dr. Mangan's lectures interesting and influential. We therefore thought it was a pity that there was very little biographical information about him on the net. I therefore said to Ian that if he gathered all the info he could I would put it up on the net. Ian is in biographical mode at the moment. He is writing <a href="http://psychologyinqueenslandmemoir.weebly.com/memoir.html">a memoir of his own time at Qld University in the sixties</a>. His memoir of Dr. Mangan is below. It is as Ian wrote it with some very minor editing by me
<br />
<br />
As you will read, Dr Mangan had a big interest in the Soviet psychology of the day and you can see a token of that influence in my graduation photo below. I posed holding a copy of the works of Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, printed in Moscow<br />
<br />
<img src="http://jonjayray.com/pavlov.jpg"><br />
<br />
Ian has not said much about Gordon Mangan's character so I will hazard a few adjectives to describe him as I saw him: Affable, cheerful, enthusiastic and very self-confident -- JR</i><br />
<br />
<br />
Dr Gordon Mangan was born in New Zealand in 1924 and completed his schooling there before taking the entrance examination to enter the University of New Zealand. In 1945 he was awarded a Masters degree in Education for his thesis involving a partial norming survey of the Stanford-Binet intelligence test for 15 and 16 year olds in New Zealand.<br />
<br />
Subsequently he moved to Melbourne where in 1952 he obtained a Bachelor of Education degree at the University of Melbourne. Following this he obtained a place in the PhD program at the University of London and was awarded a PhD in 1954.<br />
<br />
After a short stint as a high school teacher in 1954 he obtained a joint appointment as fellow of the Parapsychology Foundation and research associate at Duke University. In the fifties and sixties the Parapsychology Foundation and Duke University were renowned for taking the lead in research in paranormal psychology such as extra sensory perception (ESP) and psychokinesis (PK). In the following five years Dr Mangan made a substantial contribution to the parapsychology literature, publishing four experimental studies and three reviews.<br />
<br />
In 1956 Dr Mangan joined the department of psychology at Queen's University in Canada and in 1958 he taught at the psychology department of Victoria University in Canada during which time he continued to publish in parapsychology and other areas such as personality and aging.<br />
<br />
After that productive five years of parapsychology research, Dr Mangan never published in the area again but he carried his experience in the area with him to the University of Queensland in 1961.<br />
<br />
After leaving Queensland University in the mid seventies Dr Mangan joined one of England's elite Universities and taught psychology at Oxford. While at Oxford he continued to explore the similarities between Eastern and Western Psychology and published papers outlining the genetic, personality and nervous system implications.<br />
<br />
While at Oxford in 1982 he published his best-known work "The Biology of Human Conduct: East-West Models of Temperament and Personality". He also published in other areas, for example papers on repression and muscle tension and the genetics of the nervous system.<br />
<br />
While at Oxford Dr Mangan controversially tapped a rich vein of research funding from the tobacco industry and began a long association with the industry with publications on smoking maintenance, smoking and learning and the psychopharmacology of smoking.<br />
<br />
According to Adams (2016) by 1981, some time after arriving at Oxford, Mangan began talking about returning to New Zealand and after a few years he moved to the University of Auckland where he stayed until his retirement.<br />
<br />
For around a decade in Auckland at the end of his career Dr Mangan continued to research at a lively pace, publishing papers on personality and conditioning, music and IQ, IQ and reaction time, IQ and Evoked Potential; and smoking and IQ, reaction time and memory. He also revised and published a further edition of "The Biology of Human Conduct".<br />
<br />
After a long, productive and interesting career as a researcher and teacher of psychology Dr Mangan continued to publish innovative research until 1995 when he was 72. His most recent publication is a further reprinting of "The Biology of Human Conduct" published in 2013 when Dr Mangan was 89 years old.<br />
<br />
In 2016 an Answers.com query "Is Gordon Lavelle Mangan still alive in New Zealand" yielded a response of "He most certainly is": A very Mangan reply. Good to see he has still got his marbles. He is 92 years old this year.<br />
<br />
I attended Dr Mangan's classes during his time as Senior lecturer in Psychology at University of Queensland. He gave many of the second and third year lectures in learning theory, social psychology, neurology and psychophysics and conducted many of the practical sessions as well.<br />
<br />
At that time Dr. Mangan would have been in his late thirties and I remember him as a tall, dark haired, clean shaven man who dressed well but untidily like an absent-minded professor. He always wore a bow tie, spoke precisely and appeared somewhat eccentric.<br />
<br />
A good example of his approach to teaching and research was an experiment conducted as a class exercise, to demonstrate the effect of physiological arousal on visual acuity. For this exercise half the class fasted until the afternoon prac. class. We all then attempted to detect the first glimmer of light from a stimulus box, as it was gradually intensified. The hungry students detected the light before the ones who had eaten.<br />
<br />
Dr Mangan's lectures on the nervous system were memorable - although I remember being quite confused with his description of the structure and function of different parts of a rat's brain. It took me a long time to learn what all the bits were called and what function they had. These lectures provided some of the basis for some of my later work in neuropsychology and the diagnosis of brain dysfunction.<br />
<br />
Towards the end of his time at Queensland University Dr Mangan published prodigiously - more than a dozen papers in two years - on topics as diverse as personality variables related to visual sensitivity and the orienting reaction, arousability and distraction, after images and personality, and approach-avoidance conflict. He ran and published a Behaviour Therapy Symposium and began publishing in the area that was to become a major research area for him - the relationship between Pavlovian (Russian) and Eysenckian (Western) personality paradigms.<br />
<br />
Soviet psychology generated a lot of interest in the University of Queensland Psychology Department, as in many others in the Western world and Dr Mangan led the enthusiastic discussion of Pavlov's dog experiments and Pavlov's typology.<br />
<br />
Strangely, this enthusiasm did not extend to replicating Pavlov's experiments and I don't recall much experimentation along these lines being conducted in Queensland at the time. This might be because some of Pavlov's experiments were considered cruel, or possibly because a publication citing Russian authors might attract the attention of ASIO - Australia's security service. Even in the late sixties it was still a bad career move in Australia to be associated in any way with communism.<br />
<br />
Even so, a small but brave contingent from the Queensland University Psychology Department made a scientific visit to Russia in the sixties and presumably had to put up with the attentions of ASIO. I might add that Dr Mangan who led this expedition moved to England shortly thereafter where he could enjoy a more tolerant politico-academic environment.<br />
<br />
Dr Mangan continued his interest in Russian psychology and twenty years later wrote an influential book integrating Russian and Western personality theories. Even in the sixties at Queensland University he had developed the basics of his theory and I recall him discussing the similarity between extraversion-introversion (from the Western paradigm) and excitation-inhibition (from the Russian paradigm). Similarly he drew a parallel between the neuroticism dimension (after Cattell and Eysenk) and the strong-weak nervous system dimension of Pavlov.<br />
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An overview of his publications might lead to the conclusion that he deliberately chose areas that were neglected and controversial. He devoted half a decade of his early career to parapsychology, publishing innovative research and clearheaded reviews. He devoted the later part of his career to research in smoking - funded by the tobacco industry.<br />
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He had a lasting interest in Russian psychology particularly Pavlov and the neo-Pavlovians. A considerable amount of his work is devoted to drawing parallels between Eastern and Western conceptualisations of personality, learning and activation which culminated in an influential book "The Biology of Human Conduct: East-West Models of Temperament and Personality".<br />
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As well as these three areas he published over a broad range of topics including intelligence, aging, learning, conflict, behaviour therapy, personality, attention, music and arousal.<br />
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Bibliography<br />
<br />
Parapsychology<br />
<br />
Mangan, Gordon Lavelle. "A PK Experiment with Thirty Dice Released for High and Low Face Targets." Journal of Parapsychology(December 1954).<br />
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Mangan, Gordon Lavelle "Evidence of Displacement in a Precognitive Test." Journal of Parapsychology(March 1955).<br />
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Mangan, Gordon Lavelle. "An ESP Experiment with Dual-Aspect Targets Involving One Trial Day." Journal of Parapsychology(December 1957).<br />
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Mangan, Gordon Lavelle, and L. C. Wilbur. "The Relation of PK Object and Throwing Surface in Placement Tests." Journal of Parapsychology20 (1956); 21, (1957).<br />
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Mangan, Gordon Lavelle. "Parapsychology: A Science for Psychical Research?" Queen's Quarterly(spring 1958).<br />
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Mangan, Gordon Lavelle.A Review of Published Research on the Relationship of Some Personality Variables to ESP Scoring Level. New York: Parapsychology Foundation, 1958.<br />
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Mangan, Gordon Lavelle. "How Legitimate Are the Claims for ESP?" Australian Journal of Psychology(September 1959).<br />
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Personality East and West<br />
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Mangan, Gordon L., 1967, Studies Of The Relationship Between Neo-Pavlovian Properties Of Higher Nervous Activity And Western Personality Dimensions: Ii. The Relation Of Mobility To Perceptual Flexibility. Journal of Experimental Research in Personality, Vol 2(2), 1967, 107-116.<br />
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White, K., D., and Mangan, G., L., 1972, Strength of the nervous system as a function of personality type and level of arousal, Behaviour Research and Therapy, Volume 10, Issue 2, Pages 139-146.<br />
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Mangan, G., and Paisey, T., 1980, New perspectives in temperament/ personality research: The "Behavioral" model of the Warsaw group, The Pavlovian Journal of Biological Science: Official Journal of the Pavlovian, Volume 15, Issue 4 , pp 159-171<br />
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Mangan, G., L., (1982) The Biology of Human Conduct: East-West Models of Temperament and Personality, Pergamon Press, UK. Also on Google books<br />
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Mangan, G. L.,&Paisey, T. J., 1983 Current perspectives in neo-pavlovian temperament theory and research: A review, Australian Journal of Psychology Volume 35, Issue 3, 319-347.<br />
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Tobacco<br />
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Mangan., G., L., and Golding, J., F., 1978, An enhancement model of smoking maintenance. In R. E. Thornton (Ed.). Smoking behaviour: physiological and psychological influences (pp87-114). Churchill Livingstone, Edinburg.<br />
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Mangan, G., L., 1982, The effects of Cigarette Smoking on Vigilance Performance, The Journal of General PsychologyVolume 106, Issue 1, 77-83<br />
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Golding, J. F., & Mangan, G. L., 1982, Effects of Cigarette Smoking on Measures of Arousal, Response Suppression, and Excitation/Inhibition Balance, International Journal of the Addictions,17, 5, 793-804.<br />
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Mangan,G., L., &Golding, J., F., 1983, The Effects of Smoking on Memory Consolidation, The Journal of Psychology, Volume 115, 65-77.<br />
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Mangan, G., L., 1983, The Effects of Cigarette Smoking on Verbal Learning and Retention, The Journal of General Psychology, Volume 108, Issue 2, 203-210.<br />
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Mangan., G., L., and Golding, J., F., 1984, The psychopharmacology of smoking, Cambridge University Press<br />
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Mangan, G., and Colrain, I., 1991, Relationships Between Photic Driving, Nicotine and Memory, in Effects of Nicotine on Biological Systems, Birkhauser Basel<br />
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Stough, C,, Mangan, G., Bates,T., Pellett, O., 1994, Smoking and Raven IQ, Psychopharmacology, vol. 116, no. 3, pp. 382-384.<br />
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Bates, T., Pellett, O.L., Stough, C.K., & Mangan, G.L. (1994). The effects of smoking on simple and choice reaction time. Psychopharmacology, 114, 365-368.<br />
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Other publications<br />
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Mangan, G., 1945, A Survey of the Revised Stanford-Binet Scale with New Zealand I5 and I6 Year Olds: A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Master of Arts in Education, University of New Zealand<br />
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Mangan. G., L., 1958, Method-Of-Approach Factors in the Testing of Middle-Aged Subjects, Journal of Gerontology, 13,4.<br />
Mangan, G., L., and Clark, J., W., 1958, Rigidity Factors In The Testing Of Middle-Aged Subjects,<br />
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Quartermain, D., And Mangan, G., 1959, Role Of Relevance In Incidental Learning Of Verbal Material, Perceptual and Motor Skills, 9, 255-258.<br />
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David T. Siddle and Gordon L. Mangan, 1968, Behaviour at the point of maximum approach-avoidance conflict(pages 27-33) Australian Journal of Psychology<br />
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G. L. Mangan and L. D. Bainbridge Eds 1969 Behaviour therapy : proccedings of a symposium held by the Queensland branch of the Australian Psychological Society, 1967<br />
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Siddle, David A.; Morrish, Robert B.; White, Kenneth D.; Mangan, Gordon L. 1969, Relation of visual sensitivity to extraversion. Journal of Experimental Research in Personality, Vol 3(4), 264-267.<br />
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Mangan, Gordon L., and O'Gorman, John G., 1969, Initial amplitude and rate of habituation of orienting reaction in relation to extraversion and neuroticism. Journal of Experimental Research in Personality, Vol 3(4), 275-282.<br />
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White, Kenneth D.; Mangan, Gordon L.; Morrish, Robert B.; Siddle, David A., 1969, The relation of visual after-images to extraversion and neuroticism. Journal of Experimental Research in Personality, Vol 3(4), 268-274.<br />
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Mangan, Gordon L.; O'Gorman, John G. 1969, Initial amplitude and rate of habituation of orienting reaction in relation to extraversion and neuroticism. Journal of Experimental Research in Personality, Vol 3(4), 1969, 275-282.<br />
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Adcock, N., & Mangan, G., L., 1970 Attention and Perceptual Learning,The Journal of General Psychology, Volume 83, Issue 2, 247-254<br />
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Siddle, David A.; Mangan, Gordon L., 1971, Arousability and individual differences in resistance to distraction. Journal of Experimental Research in Personality, Vol 5(4), Dec 1971, 295-303.<br />
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Foggitt,R. H., Mangan, G. L., &Law, H., 1972, Cognitive Performance and Linguistic Codeability, International Journal of Psychology, Volume 7, Issue 3, 155-161<br />
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Mangan, G., L., The Relationship of Mobility of Inhibition to Rate of Inhibitory Growth and Measures of Flexibility, Extraversion, and Neuroticism, The Journal of General Psychology, Volume 99, Issue 2, 271-279.<br />
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Mangan, G., Murphy, G., Farmer, R., 1980, The role of muscle tension in "repression", Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, Vol. 15, No. 4. pp. 172-176.<br />
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Paisey, T., H., and Mangan, G., L., 1988, Personality and conditioning with appetitive and aversive stimuli, Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 9, Issue 1, Pages 69-78<br />
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Stough, C., Kerkin, B.,Bates, T., Mangan. G., 1994, Music and spatial IQ, Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 17, Issue 5,<br />
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Bates, T., Stough, C., Mangan, G., Pellett, O., 1995, Intelligence and complexity of the averaged evoked potential: An attentional theory, Intelligence, Volume: 20 Issue: 1, Page: 27-39<br />
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References and links<br />
<br />
Adams, P., J., 2016 Moral Jeopardy: Risks of Accepting Money from the Alcohol, Tobacco and Gambling industries Cambridge University Press.<br />
<br />
Kiwi, Annual Magazine Of The Students' Association, Auckland University College 1945<br />
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Mangan, Gordon Lavelle (1924-). <a href="http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3403802939.html">Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. 200</a>; Retrieved July 18, 2016<br />
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<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n82-119175/">Mangan Publication timeline</a><br />
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University of Melbourne <a href="https://digitised-collections.unimelb.edu.au/bitstream/handle/11343/23444/110442_UMC195314_Degrees%20Conferred%201952.pdf">Degrees Conferred 1952</a><br />
<br />JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063789667464572889.post-72034359281684347202016-06-12T04:54:00.001-07:002016-06-12T04:54:06.069-07:00<br><br>
<b>Ingeborg Hallstein: Die Fledermaus (excerpt)</b>
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<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/twQTKVzsJiI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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From Act 2, The czardas "Klänge der Heimat" (Sounds of the homeland)
<br><br>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063789667464572889.post-41186993397663093662016-04-04T03:50:00.000-07:002019-05-17T01:06:39.616-07:00Another Ingeborg Hallstein clip<br />
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I have just come across her singing "Ich bin die Christel von der Post", from 1973. I am used to the version sung by Ute Gfrerer but they are both very good. The operetta was "Der Vogelhandler" by Zeller<br />
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<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dD43qG2R5Yo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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She once again uses heavy eye makeup. I think that was characteristic of the time.<br />
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Below is another clip, with her singing the famous Nightingale song by Grothe. She has just the voice for that<br />
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<iframe width="440" height="300" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SbejBzYxJ8I" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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<br />JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063789667464572889.post-12073890444011258792015-12-14T23:03:00.000-08:002019-05-17T01:36:33.154-07:00<br />
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<b> Austro/Hungarian operetta</b>
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Austro/Hungarian operetta is light-hearted opera written around a hundred years ago principally for the entertainment of the inhabitants of <i>Wien</i> (Vienna) which was at that time the capital of an ancient and major European state, the Austro/Hungarian empire.<br />
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Before the 19th century, opera was fairly cheerful. And among his 22 operas, Mozart in particular wrote a lot of <i>Opera buffa</i>, comic opera. Comic or not, just the brilliant overtures of some of Mozart's operas reduce me to tears of joy. There is something unearthly in Mozart, for those who can hear it. But even Handel operas had a lot of joy in them. At the finale of <i>Giulio Cesare</i>, for instance, we find in the finale everybody lined up and singing lustily a triumphant song. <br />
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But in the more famous 19th century, French and Italian opera became much more morbid. They are romantic but everybody seems to die at the end of them. In "Carmen", for instance, Carmen gets stabbed to death by her jealous lover and in "Aida" the lovers end up immured. So I enjoy the wonderful arias from 19th century French and Italian opera but I have never been inclined to watch much of the operas concerned: Too bleak for me. So for a long time, my liking for opera stopped at Mozart.<br />
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I have long been familiar with the more famous arias from operetta but grand opera had long put me off wanting to watch anything even vaguely recent. About 6 months ago, however, I somehow got motivated to have a look at the more famous operettas, starting, of course, with <i>Im weissen Roessl</i>, "The white horse inn" -- in the Moerbisch performance. I was immediately enraptured: good music, great jokes, attractive singers, joyous dancing, total romance and a gloriously happy ending. What more could one ask? Realistic it was not but great fun it was. I must have watched the show somewhere between 30 and 50 times by now but I still laugh at the jokes every time. They are that good.<br />
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Operettas and indeed most operas are romantic -- even though the outcome differs. I am inclined to think that the most romantic of all is <i>Zarewitsch</i> by Lehar. And in true operetta style, advancing the romance by getting the heir to the throne of all the Russias drunk on champagne is a definite classic. Vienna was never a place for teetotalling. There must have been trainloads of champagne going from the vineyards of France to Vienna.<br />
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Although it is easy to enjoy, I would like to make the case that it is actually very sophisticated entertainment. For a start, the artistic requirements of both grand opera and operetta are quite high. The vocal feats required of the singers are maximal in both genres and good acting is, if anything, even more important in operetta. Putting a joke across requires some very good timing and expression. And it is broadly the same singers who sing in both.<br />
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Secondly, Austro/Hungarian operetta was written for people who had it all. They lived at the heart of an enormously rich civilization. Vienna before WWI was not only a great and rich imperial capital with many nations under its rule but it was also at the cutting edge culturally and intellectually.<br />
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It was, for instance, the time and place of the immensely influential Sigmund Freud, by far the leading psychologist of the time. He was a great observer and I quote him occasionally still. And the immense distinction of Vienna in analytical philosophy cannot be gainsaid -- Schlick, Wittgenstein etc. And in economics the luminaries of the prewar Austrian school (Carl Menger; Eugen Böhm Ritter von Bawerk etc.) are honoured to this day -- though not among Leftists. Vienna had a very good claim at that time to be the intellectual capital of the world.<br />
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And, musically, it started out on top -- with the enormous heritage of the great Austrian composers -- Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert etc -- so any new compositions had a lot to live up to. And the wonder is that some composers stood out even in that environment -- with Strauss II being merely the best known of many. And there were vast numbers of innovative Viennese artists too, led by Klimt in particular<br />
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So the Viennese had it all. And what you want when you have it all is entertainment. And to be entertaining to such an indulged and sophisticated audience you had to be pretty good. So I see the lightness and frivolity of operetta not as trivial but as a major cultural achievement.<br />
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As far as I can tell, waltzing seems to have a rather staid reputation in the Anglosphere but it is not at all staid in Austro/Hungarian operetta. The joyous climax to a waltz can be where the lady throws her arms out wide while the man spins her around with his hands on her waist only. That is very exciting. Feminists would hate it. Let me close with a famous line from <i>Im weissen Roessl</i>: "Ein Liebeslied muss ein Walzer sein" (A song of love has to be a waltz).<br />
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<img src="https://i.imgur.com/vg3316R.jpg" height="350" width="420" />
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Feminists would hate the scene above but I'm betting that the lady concerned was pleased to be there.
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<br />JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063789667464572889.post-71843013977405872622015-12-03T06:04:00.000-08:002015-12-03T07:26:51.178-08:00Le nozze di Figaro<div>
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<img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/71L1F59pS%2BL._SY445_.jpg" /><br />
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I have just finished watching on DVD a 2006 French performance, sung in the original Italian with English subtitles, of "The Marriage of Figaro" by Mozart. It is one of the most famous operas of all time so I am perfectly sure that I can say nothing original about it -- except perhaps to say that I still prefer Viennese operetta. Operetta is shorter and wittier. But Mozart's wonderful music makes up for everything, of course. The overture is one of my favourite pieces. <br />
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So what I want to do now is just to leave a few notes here for my own future reference about the cast of the performance I saw. I might at first note something amusing, however. Apparently there was an IKEA in the 18th century! The opening scene is of Figaro putting bits of a disassembled bed together! In the original libretto he is just measuring up the room at that point so the producers of this show obviously had a little joke.<br />
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Pietro Spagnoli as the Count was very Italian, rather like a Mafia Don, so definitely well-cast. Luca Pisaroni as Figaro is actually Venezuelan-born but probably from Italian parents. He grew up in Italy, anyway. He gave a very strong performance.<br />
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Well-known German soprano Annette Dasch was strikingly pretty as the Countess. She is quite tall too, taller than everyone else in the cast aside from Figaro -- and she seems about the same height as him. And we see at one point that she is wearing FLAT shoes!<br />
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Her looks rather show up the gaunt-looking Welsh soprano Rosemary Joshua as Susanna, though Susanna was very well played. Joshua is very experienced in that role. Maybe Joshua was on a very severe diet at the time. I gather she was born in 1970 or thereabouts so should not have been noticeably aged in 2006.
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I disliked Austrian mezzo Angelika Kirchschlager as Cherubino. She is probably a fine woman but I thought she was very unconvincing in the role. But I detest trouser roles anyway. The part was originally written for a male so why not stick with that? I appear to be quite out of tune with the times in that matter, though. There is actually a currently fashionable feminist claim that men can play women's roles and women can play men's roles and it makes no difference. As far as I can see, the difference is in fact highly visible. It is just not good casting.<br />
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Looking into the ethnicity of opera singers is a little hobby of mine. I like to guess what they are on first encountering a singer, even though I mostly get it wrong. So Sophie Pondjiclis as Marcellina quite puzzled me. At times she looked very Italian but at others did not. So I looked her up. She is Greek. So that rather solved it. Greeks can be as explosive as Italians but don't do it as often. That is as I have seen it, anyway.<br />
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Some of the info above was a little hard to get. Most of the singers are not well-known. I very often in such searches find that I can get the info I want from sites in German only. There is just nothing in English.<br />
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When looking up Pondjiclis there was nothing useful in English so I got the info off a non-English site. I assumed that I was reading German but when I looked closely I saw it was in French, a language I have never studied. The foreigners begin at Calais, you know, to bowdlerize an old expression. <br />
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But, if I know roughly what the text is about, I find I can follow most European languages. I remember reading a scientific paper in Romanian once! With only two major exceptions, European languages are all related, so the Latin, Italian and German I have studied open up other European languages fairly easily.<br />
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There are online quite a lot of excerpts from this performance, particularly of the arias sung by Annette Dasch. Below are two. Both have English subtitles. The first is "Dove sono i bei momenti":<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/s6RL0xoP9I0" width="420"></iframe><br />
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And we also have "Che soave zeffiretto"<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/y5fLJjK5BDA" width="420"></iframe><br />
<br /></div>JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063789667464572889.post-21190151042992708072015-10-21T05:27:00.000-07:002015-10-22T05:27:25.064-07:00<br /><br />
<b><i>Zar und Zimmermann</i> </b>
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Yesterday I got in the mail a DVD of <i>Zar und Zimmermann</i> -- a German comic opera written about 150 years ago. It took me a long time to decide to buy it but I thought it might be worth a go. It is Austro/Hungarian operetta from either side of the year 1900 that I like and this was composed well before that period in Germany. But I seem by now to have acquired all of the few available DVDs of Austro/Hungarian operetta so I thought I might branch out a bit. <i>Zar und Zimmermann</i> (The Tsar and the carpenter) is after all an acclaimed and popular comic opera that is still performed in Germany.
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<img src="http://i.ndcd.net/13/Item/500/211316.jpg" height="650" width="420" /><br />
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Alas, however, the humour was very low level -- clown humour just about. It had none of the quick wit and sophistication of Austro/Hungarian operetta. I just got bored with it and turned it off 1.5 hours into the 2.5 hour show. Maybe I will try to watch it again some time. Could the final hour redeem it? Who knows?<br />
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UPDATE: I have now watched the final hour of the show and have ended up more favourably disposed towards it. I even got a laugh out of the scene where the mistaken emperor Peter meets his girlfriend in his new role. The show as a whole was just fun with nothing horrible happening -- which I liked. I tried to re-watch the mentally ill "Carmen" recently but couldn't do it. It was just too silly. I gave that DVD to Anne. She likes conventional opera.<br />
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I was most taken with the scenes of Dutch shipbuilding, set in 1698. It was great to see the old hand-tools in use -- adzes, augers, two-handed planes and crosscut saws. I may be one of the few left who have had some contact with all that. I have seen a man use an adze and I have myself used a wood auger. It is downstairs in my garage as I write this.<br />
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And seeing the crosscut saw was very nostalgic. I remember my father setting and sharpening his big blue-steel crosscut saws. He used them to cut down big forest trees in the era before chainsaws. Yes: There was such a time.<br />
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And the very first Ray in my Australian family was a sawyer -- A central trade in building the old wooden ships. How do you get evenly straight planks without a circular saw? The old sawyers did it. The original Joseph Henry Ray came out from England to Australia as a convict chained up in the hold of a sailing ship -- an East Indiaman. So I almost could see my great-great grandfather at work in this show.<br />
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An excerpt:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Yat7RGaR9q4" width="560"></iframe><br />
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YouTube sometimes does strange things when clips are called from it. You get the wrong clip altogether sometimes. If the above clip is irrelevant, the link to the intended clip is here:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Yat7RGaR9q4
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There were actually some distinguished people in the show. The girlfriend was sung quite charmingly by the Slovakian Lucia Popp, whom the Austrian cultural authorities recognized as a <i>Kammersängerin</i>.<br />
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And the conductor was the distinguished Australian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Mackerras">Charles Mackerras</a>. There seemed to be rather a lot of Mackerrases around in Australian public life at one time.<br />
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The show was supposedly set in "Saardam", now "Zaandam". The production was from the Hamburgische Staatsoper, 1969.<br />
<br /><br />JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9063789667464572889.post-4361912560685114252015-09-29T16:39:00.001-07:002019-05-17T04:59:43.062-07:00
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<b><i>Der Opernball</i> by Heuberger</b><br />
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<img height="600" src="https://media1.jpc.de/image/w600/front/0/0807280162899.jpg" width="420" /><br />
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Perfect Viennese froth and bubble! A perfect farce! Nothing serious from beginning to end. Full of laughs. A most enjoyable show. It sometimes takes a bit to get "into" an operetta but this was all in the open from beginning to end. It is one of those operettas that one can watch time and time again without it palling. It was, of course, all about flirtation and deception, as a farce usually is.<br />
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The DVD I have records a "Made for TV" show of 1970 from Munich. Libretto by Victor Leon and Heinrich von Waldberg; Directed by Willy Mattes; Music by Richard Heuberger, an Austrian. The show was an instant hit at its first performance in 1898, getting rapturous applause. And I fully understand why.<br />
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Movie versions of books and plays often stray a fair bit from the original and this one did too. There is also a 1964 B&W version of the show featuring Ingeborg Hallstein and Peter Alexander which is now known only from a clip from the famous <i>Chambre séparée</i> scene, and it too seems to have strayed off in yet a different direction. But both meanders were successful and amusing so that is what matters.<br />
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Incidentally, I read that Heuberger spent a long time thinking about his composition of the <i>Chambre Séparée</i> scene but then sat down and wrote the entire duet in one afternoon.<br />
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<i>The cast</i><br />
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I was pleased to see two familiar faces in the show: Harald Serafin and Tatjana Iwanow. I would not have recognized Serafin though. I had known him only in his incarnation as <i>Intendant</i> at Moerbisch -- mostly when he was in his '70s. But in this show he was around 35. Quite a shock to see how much difference age can make. I actually think he was more amusing in his '70s -- though he was very good in this show. I was also interested to see that he was quite tall compared to the other actors in the show.<br />
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Ancestrally, he is half North German and half Italian so it was a bit amusing to see him cast as an Englishman in this show.<br />
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I first saw Tatjana Iwanow in <i>Dollarprinzessin</i>, recorded in 1971. In both shows she played most convincingly a very cynical and scheming older woman. She could bark orders well too, as when she shouted <i>Setzen!</i> at the maid "Hortense". She played such an evil role that one could miss that she was actually quite good-looking however: A fine figure of a woman with brilliant blue eyes.<br />
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The maid was played by Christiane Schröder. A Berliner with grey eyes and fair skin, she looked rather English to me. She was rather short and also slightly built -- "only a slip of a girl", as the Irish say. When Serafin grabbed her to dance with her at one stage, he looked like a monster beside her. She was thrown around rather like a rag doll on a couple of occasions, actually. <br />
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Schröder had a sad life. She was born in 1942, had considerable success in the theatre and in films but became depressed and at age 38 jumped off the Golden Gate bridge to her death. She was a dear little thing with real talent as a singer so I am sad that life turned out so badly and ended so soon for her. She did at one stage marry so one hopes that gave her some of life's rewards for a time.<br />
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I am putting up below a picture of her with "Henri", her Naval cadet boyfriend, played by Uwe Friedrichsen, a Saxon, who is now in his 80s and well known as a character actor on German TV. Something he did well was (blue) eyes opened very wide in a portrayal of surprise on various occasions. All the color pictures of him online are in elderly roles so this is the first pic put online of him as a young man. Google has picked it up but there are so many pix of Friedrichsen online that you have to be an experienced or very patient Googler to find it<br />
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<img src="http://i.imgur.com/j2N33Cu.jpg" /><br />
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His part was originally written as a trouser role so I am profoundly glad that the producers of this show did not feel obliged to follow that obsolete fashion. I hate that custom.<br />
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And I must mention the two ladies who were testing out their husbands. Hélène Mané as "Angele" and Maria Tiboldi as "Marguerite" were both very pretty ladies who also sang well, the brown-eyed Hélène Mané with the big smile particularly. She was elsewhere known for singing in Bach cantatas. I thought she looked either Italian or Southern French so I was not surprised to read the following puff about her:<br />
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"Hélène Mané comes from a French-Italian family of singers, her coloratura is known in all continents and she has guest-appeared in operas from Leningrad to Lisbon. Her repertoire is mostly Italian." <br />
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She seemed a nice lady anyway. At least one publicist saw her as the leading attraction in this show so the puff was perhaps not out of bounds. She certainly got some good arias to sing and sang them well.<br />
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The Hungarian Maria Tiboldi was 31 at the time of the show but looked very young -- thanks, no doubt, to some combination of good skin and stage makeup. She had a very pleasant rather low-pitched speaking voice. A soprano with a low-pitched speaking voice seems rather mad but it is not uncommon in my experience.<br />
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<img src="https://i.imgur.com/VZRALZ0.jpg" /><br />
<i>The three women of the show, Tiboldi, Mané and Schröder</i>
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And I enjoyed the expressions of the <i>Chambre séparée</i> waiter. Very droll and world-weary beneath the formality. He actually had a good racket going. And it was one of the good laughs when Friedrichsen claimed to be aflame with passion for "Hortense". The waiter was nearby at that point and, in an entirely understandable way, he rolled his eyes on hearing that! He was also amusing earlier on in that scene when "Hortense" urged <i>Geduld</i> (patience ) on her admirer.<br />
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And I did enjoy Heinz Erhardt as "Caesare-Aristide", the scandal-sheet proprietor It was a comic role and he played it very well. The episode where his escort ordered a huge and expensive dinner at his expense was utterly corny but so well-done as to be amusing anyhow. I still laugh when I think of it. No wonder Erhardt was a noted comic. And his wild dancing was a caricature of dancing. A great laugh. He was trying to impress the low-class "Feodora" with his youthfulness.<br />
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He is just one of those naturally funny men like John Cleese or Barry Humphries. He comes across as absurd from the outset. He was a marvellous asset to the show. Some of the jokes involving him are in that rare category of jokes that you laugh at every time even if you have heard them many times before.<br />
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But I was surprised at the scene where "Hortense" was talking with her friend, the chambermaid at the "Ritz". The chambermaid was clearly half Negro. That really stood out beside the very fair Berliner. Was political correctness already around in 1970? Perhaps. Viennese operettas are usually as all-white as Russian ballet. On second thoughts, it can't have been political correctness -- as the black lady was cast in a lowly servant role. So it was actually that naughty "stereotyping"!<br />
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Operetta normally has a clear leading lady and leading man but that was not at all clear in this case. I guess that Serafin was the leading man but who was the leading lady? I would have to nominate "Hortense", even though she is clearly from the "second string" story. For comparison: In <i>Graefin Mariza</i> at Moerbisch, I thought that Marco Kathol was the outstanding male figure too, despite being second string.<br />
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<i>The action</i><br />
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Both Mané ("Angele") and Christiane Schröder ("Hortense") sang the <i>Chambre séparée</i> song very well but the singer who sang it best on this occasion was, in my view, Schröder, playing the little maid "Hortense". She put out a few coloratura trills at times throughout the show, so was no mean singer.<br />
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Having said that the show was a classical farce, I don't think I really need to say any more about the plot. It was to a considerable extent a re-run of the plot in <i>Fledermaus</i>, albeit with two deceived men instead of one.<br />
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There were lots of funny bits but one that stays with me is when the journalist asks the Englishman's wife what he had to give her to get a kiss. She replies: "chloroform". What a put-down! Chloroform is a surgical anaesthetic.<br />
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As is common in operetta, there are fleeting jokes, jokes that fly by you in a couple of seconds which you may or may not "get". One such was when "Georges" the journalist gets his invitation. The other two men make fools of themselves when they get their invitations but "Georges" does not. On hearing that his letter is from the Ritz, he immediately SNIFFS it. And on detecting perfume rightly assumes that he will be busy later that day. He has obviously had assignations with ladies at the Ritz before. The maid reads him well, however.<br />
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Another fleeting event was when the maid introduces the low-class "Feodora". I can't really isolate how she does it -- curtseying with upturned eyes and a smile maybe -- but she does display amused contempt for Feodora. A Parisian maid may not be high up but is still a respectable somebody -- certainly above the <i>hoi polloi</i> in social status.<br />
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Another fast-moving joke lasting only a few seconds was towards the end of the show when the plebeian "Feodora" was suggested by the clueless "Caesare-Aristide" as the new chambermaid, that was generally accepted but Serafin quickly slipped her some "silence-money", which she promptly and wisely tucked into her bra.<br />
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Another thing that you had to be attentive to get was when the naval cadet was kissing the hand of the English lady. His <i>inamorata</i>, "Hortense", gives him in passing a quick thump on the shoulder while he was doing that, producing an "ouch" from him. The lady thought it was a comment on her so he had to improvise quickly to get out of the situation. He didn't actually say "ouch", however. That was as the subtitles rendered it. He said something like "auer", which is very much like what some English-speakers would say<br />
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I was also amused when the cadet did not stay restrained for long when he got his lady into the <i>Chambre separee</i>. After drinking some champagne with her, he demanded that she get it all off -- domino, dress and all. Navy directness, I guess.<br />
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A small bonus in the show which I enjoyed was in the first dancing scene. It included a tall thin male dancer with a big conk in black garb and a top hat who reminded me powerfully of John Cleese doing "silly walks". Not sure it was intentional but it was amusing. He actually did well to leap about so much. At one stage he took his hat off and we could see a bald spot in his hair. So he was no spring chicken.<br />
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I was surprised that the "Englishman" (Serafin) was portrayed as making a social class mistake. Social class is pretty influential in Germany but to this day it is even more so in England. An educated Englishman would NEVER make a class mistake as gross as that portrayed. Heuberger must not have known the English well. There were actually several points in the show where the English were mocked. Serafin's mistake was inviting the loud and brassy "sister" of a Paris cafe proprietor (undoubtedly a rather "available" lady) to a formal middle-class dinner. It at least reduced the tension that she arrived late.<br />
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Her gaffes were epic: Mistaking <i>In flagrante</i> as a place in Italy and not at all knowing what a Tintoretto was. But she was indulged. <br />
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Like most Australians, I have no time for social class myself but it is a central concept in sociology, which I taught for a number of years. I even have <a href="http://jonjayray.comuv.com/qclass.html">a published academic journal article</a> on the subject. See also <a href="http://jonjayray.comuv.com/short/soclass.html">here</a>. So maybe I know something about it anyway.<br />
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And another social class oddity was that "Hortense" had a rather familiar relationship with the family who employed her. I suppose that master/servant relationships do differ and this one was simply towards one end of the spectrum. The maid had an out-of-class role in <i>Fledermaus</i> too, particularly in the recent Moerbisch version.<br />
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And when the servant "borrowed" from her mistress a garment to wear to the ball, that was, of course, another re-run of <i>Fledermaus</i>.<br />
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And the show ends up in classical operetta style with lots of laughs. The scene of three men marching up together to confront a line of three ladies was a great comic invention. But all three couples were happily reunited. After all the dramas, they end up flying into one-another's arms: How it should be but not always so in real life.<br />
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I should mention that the show was presented as a <i>Rahmenerzaehlung</i> -- a story within a story. The "outer" and quite minor story was of Tolouse Lautrec telling what happened at the Parisian opera ball to his nice-looking young red-headed model. It was quite a nice little story but quite tangential to the whole. I suppose it was a way of getting a narrator on stage. Narrators are not common in shows these days but they have their uses.<br />
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The bit I liked about that story was when the model imagined the fallout from the ball. She saw the galumphing <i>Caesare-Aristide</i> as triumphant because of the lies that "Feodora" told about his performance in the <i>Chambre Séparée</i>. Crazy!<br />
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<img src="https://i.imgur.com/d1cmDV8.jpg" />
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<i>The model</i><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/H_WHF1r7FC0" width="420"></iframe><br />
<i>Four good scenes, Serafin discovering the Parisian ladies in the first one. Some good shots of Iwanowa in the second one. And the <i>Chambre séparée</i> song in the final one. The lady in sky-blue is the maid "Hortense"</i><br />
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Putting up film clips one after another does seem to get YouTube muddled rather often but let me try it. I try below to put up the 1964 clip of the <i>Chambre séparée</i> scene -- with Peter Alexander and the ultra-feminine Ingeborg Hallstein. I like the voices better there. If it doesn't come up, it is here: https://www.youtube.com/embed/OYP4jTTa5tM<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OYP4jTTa5tM" width="420"></iframe><br />
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Note the tiny gesture she uses to tell her escort to blow out the candles. Hallstein is good at tiny but expressive gestures. She really is the ultimate female.<br />
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<i>Other details</i><br />
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At the risk of exposing myself as a <i>naif</i> in these matters, I was rather surprised at the continual rain of confetti (if that is what it was) at the Paris opera ball. In the days of my youth, I went to quite a few balls at Brisbane's much acclaimed but now lost "Cloudland" ballroom but I never encountered anything like that. It has been said that a significant fraction of Brisbane's population was conceived in the "Cloudland" carpark so there is no doubt that it was a good ballroom. I just have memories of some lovely ladies at that time. The only one whose name I can remember is Zita Trevethan<br />
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It would be rather silly of me to try to explain all the jokes and allusions in the show -- so I won't try -- but but perhaps I should explain what the "three sacred things" were that Paris and Vienna were said to have. Paris had Napoleon Bonaparte, the Red Mill (Moulin Rouge) cabaret and the opera ball. Vienna had Sissi, the Prater and their <i>Opernball</i>. "Sissi" was the late, admired, and still commemorated Empress Elizabeth of Austria. There is to this day a museum devoted to her in Vienna. And the Prater is a large public park which includes the oldest amusement park in the world -- plus many other attractions.<br />
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And what was the <i>bergère</i> that Serafin was asked to inspect? A <i>bergère</i> is basically a big comfortable French armchair with an upholstered back and armrests. In this case, however, it would have been a fancy and upholstered chair for two. You see one in the clip with Hallstein above<br />
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I thought I might also say a word on what a "Domino" is when it comes to ladies' clothing. They are basically a 19th century phenomenon. They were all-covering garments often worn to masked balls and the like. They are a way of hiding in plain sight, so were well adapted to the story in this show. As you can see from the picture of "Hortense" below, they had hoods and big sleeve and usually had fancy trims. They are usually in mostly dark colors so in this show the pinkness stood in for fancy trims and helped them to be easily identified by the adventure-seeking males. The inside of the hoods, however, was black.<br />
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<img src="https://i.imgur.com/5Y520jm.jpg" />
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And the journalist's half-remembered dream from the future was a bit of a challenge. Who were "Birdstein" and "Caravan", for instance"? Fairly easy: "Bernstein" and "Karajan". But the others were harder. "Nelly" was presumably Grace Kelly and "Pallas" was "Maria Callas", but that is as far as I can confidently go. Was one of the others Jacqueline du Pré? Maybe. I have her wonderful recording of the Elgar cello concerto.<br />
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The massive hair arrangements that the ladies wore had a certain attractiveness. Like the holy apostle Paul (1 Corinthians 11), I like a lot of hair on the head of a lady. But they were rather obviously wigs on this occasion so I could have done without that. The wigs really sprouted when they went to the ball. Only "Hortense" seemed to be showing her own hair throughout.<br />
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<i>Translations</i><br />
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One word that was wisely left untranslated in the generally excellent subtitles was "Kobold". "The fairies" or "gremlins" would work as translations in some contexts but basically it is a German myth that has no exact translation. Kobolds were mischievous spirits with no clear equivalent in the English-speaking world.<br />
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An odd thing about German was that the pink dominoes were variously described as "nelke" or "rosa". Both are names of flowers in German. There is no dedicated word for "pink" in German as there is in English. I gather that "rosa" is the most common translation of "pink" but roses come in a many colors -- as any Texan will tell you.<br />
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I wonder a little why <i>Chambre Séparée</i> is used in the show when perfectly good German alternatives would seem to be available -- <i>Privatzimmer, Privatkammer</i> and even <i>Privatgemach</i>. I guess that use of French is seen as more sophisticated. There is an impression of the French to that effect in the English-speaking world too. If sexual promiscuity equates to sophistication, I guess the impression is an accurate one. An amusing thing is that the expression as a whole is German rather than French. The French say "cabinet particulier". Boringly "private room" in English, of course.<br />
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As Obama might say, let me make that perfectly clear: Although it uses French words, <i>Chambre Séparée</i> is actually a German expression.<br />
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And a VERY small point that pleased me: I noticed that in the <i>Ueberall</i> song "Angele" referred to Naples as "Neapel". Most likely that is normal German practice but it is quite sophisticated. In Tuscan Italian the city is <i>Napoli</i>. But "Neapel" is how Neapolitanians refer to their city. And what a marvellous example of continuity that is. When the Greeks founded the city around 2,800 years ago they called it "Neapolis" -- meaning "New city". And "Neapel" is very close to that ancient Greek name: Marvellous. Memory preserved over an amazing stretch of time.<br />
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Seeing it is such a big feature of the show, I thought I might give below one version of the words of the <i>Im Chambre Séparée</i> song, followed by my translation of it into English. <br />
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Geh'n wir in's chambre séparée<br />
Let's go into the private room<br />
Ach, zu dem süssen tete a tete,<br />
Oh! for the sweet head to head<br />
dort beim Champagner und beim Souper<br />
There with champagne and supper<br />
man alles sich leichter gesteht!<br />
One more easily confesses everything<br />
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Ach, kommen Sie, mein Herr,<br />
O come my sir<br />
Dass ich gestehe,<br />
That I may confess,<br />
was längst für Sie ich schon empfinde.<br />
What I have long felt for you<br />
So kommen Sie zu Tête à tête<br />
So come to the head to head<br />
Dass ich gestehe; ja, gestehe,<br />
That I may confess, yes confess<br />
Was längst; ja, längst<br />
What for a long time, yes a long time<br />
Für sie ich, ja, empfinde.<br />
What I have felt for you<br />
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Geh'n wir in's chambre séparée<br />
Let's go into the private room<br />
Ach, zu dem süssen tete a tete,<br />
Oh! for the sweet head to head<br />
dort beim Champagner und beim Souper<br />
There with champagne and supper<br />
man alles sich leichter gesteht!<br />
One more easily confesses everything<br />
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<br />JRhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00829082699850674281noreply@blogger.com0