Prince Poppycock News
American opera singer
- tenor
- musical
- United States of America
- opera singer, songwriter
Last update
2024-03-28
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2014-01-17 09:26:42
Le droit du canard
Oh, we’ve a veritable cassoulet of canards to feast upon this week, cher public, courtesy of our old friend Rupert Christiansen. In a little essay with the provocative title “Why opera directors must stop patronising people,” Mr. C. attempts to make a number of points, none of which I think he lands with any success. But what I’d like to take on is his niggling about what one might call historical accuracy as it applies to historical fiction. Let us begin with the statement “Le Nozze di Figaro doesn’t make sense later than Napoleon’s abolition of the droit du seigneur on which the plot is premised.” Now, this sounds all very learned and fancy, but the problem is, it’s Poppycock. To begin with, the so-called “droit du seigneur,” that is, a codified rule that a nobleman has the right to take the virginity of a newly-wedded bride, is largely, […]
2013-11-04 20:13:45
[…] Joseph: who are you trying to imitate?” Time stopped. My heart pumped its last. My breath would not come. I hoped against all hope for the floor to open and simply swallow me, and it rewarded my faith with stubborn inaction. My career, I knew, had just ended. “Um…Dr. A…I…I never try to imitate anyone!” I stammered. “I try to write with my own voice, you know, and of course don’t try to…” He smiled. “Poppycock! Absolute bull. Don’t tell me what you think I want to hear! Now tell me–who are you trying to imitate?” I was speechless. Was my acceptance, then, a cruel joke? Was he regretting his invitation? Did he not even think me worthy of mercy?! He sighed and stood up, clapping his hands together, and exclaimed “My dear boy, everyone tries to imitate the composers they admire, especially when they are young! You’re how old? […]
2013-10-09 23:11:23
Composers on Camera: Mozart's Sister
[…] The movie gets this right, if little else. Therefore, none of Nannerl’s music survives, and indeed she had little confidence in her own creative capacity. The biggest load of malarkey occurs at the inevitable end of the picture where we are informed that “Nannerl never composed again.” (Actually, we don’t really know, and certainly a fictional story shouldn’t be seen as the source of a factual event, right?) “She died at 78, poor and blind…” (Poppycock. She was a baroness, and left an estate worth almost 8,000 gulden). “…having devoted her life to gathering her brother’s works for posterity.” (Serious horseshit. Constanze was the one who was most centrally involved with collecting and publishing Wolfgang Mozart’s scores. Nannerl’s involvement was tangential at best.) I came away from this film feeling that the real story of Nannerl Mozart had yet to be told, and that this fantasy actually removed the viewer […]
Kenneth Woods- A View From the Podium
2012-09-08 18:30:38
Strauss and Mahler’s perilous descent from the summit
[…] not to take too much offense at the complaints of critics and scholars that his use of programs made for music that was simplistic and one-dimensional, and lacking purely musical coherence and logic. Even the Wikepidia article on the Alpine contends that: “In general, however, it is believed that comparisons to any kind of traditional symphonic form are secondary to the strong sense of structure created by the piece’s musical pictorialism [sic] and detailed narrative.” Poppycock. The piece works formally whether you know anything about the narrative program or respond to the pictorialism. It is blindingly obvious to anyone who spends any time getting to know any of Strauss’s purely orchestral works that such naysayers literally couldn’t be more wrong. Whether it’s the Alpine, Tod und Verklarung, Don Juan or Till Eulenspiegel, all of these works possess a truly staggering level of purely musical coherence and logic. Each of the […]
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