Tea at Trianon: A Fascist Anthem?

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

A Fascist Anthem?

This is the most stupid article I have ever seen, in which Puccini's Nessun Dorma from Turandot is called "fascist anthem"! Turandot is one of my favorite operas. When I was in graduate school researching the fate of the last Romanovs, Turandot's grandeur and tragedy was one of the few pieces of music capable of capturing the full scope of the misery of the downfall and death of the Tsar and his family. I listened to it constantly in my grandmother's flat where I was staying, so that Grandma was concerned that the neighbors might be annoyed.

Many years later, when writing Madame Royale, Turandot played over and over again in the background, for the cold, deeply wounded, Chinese princess of the opera was not unlike Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, haunted by the past and unable to move beyond it. Opera is a bit like the Latin Mass; you do not have to understand every single word in order to be swept up into it.

But now I see Turandot labelled as "fascist." How ridiculous. Puccini died in 1924. He was an artist; he was not a political person. When Mussolini first came to power he courted Puccini by making him a senator but there is no strong evidence that Puccini was ever a member of the fascist party. Turandot was his last opera and it is about so many other things than politics. It is about the power of love. It is about self-sacrifice. That is probably why Trump loves it. That is certainly why I love it. People who try to politicize such magnificent music just make themselves seem silly. Share