Bohemian Rhapsody

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(It's Mozart's Wife, my friends, under a new title and cover here and there, because of Amazonian-evil-shenanigans.)

I'll call this a movie review , but I confess I'm writing because I've been unable to get my last weekend's viewing of Bohemian Rhapsody out of my head. I've got a case of full on ear worm, too, from hearing all those great songs. This topic is not too far off course for me, because forty years back, I dared to begin novel writing after having my brain completely eaten by seeing Amadeus.  

Although it's a fairly middle-of-the-road biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody struck me similarly.  The movie was, after all, about another human one of a kind, one of those rare people about whom others say: "They broke the mold." Don't think I'll get any argument if I say that we'll never see another Mozart, nor will we ever see another Freddie Mercury--at least, not in this dimension.*

Rami Malek as Freddie at Live Aid in Bohemian Rhapsody

Like Wolfgang M., Freddie Mercury was born with an abundance of charisma, drive, and a mad desire to entertain. A biopic hero with drama-ready flaws and conflicts, Freddie Mercury's bisexuality, when yoked to the excesses of the 70's and 80's rock world, made him one of the many victims of the AIDS epidemic. His career, like those of many many artists, performers and musicians, was cut short. Fortunately, the audience in whose company we saw Bohemian Rhapsody seemed to honor this gifted "sinner."

Freddie Mercury

I went with a friend to whom those dark days of AIDS in the 80's still hold a lot of pain. Magda has custody of the cremains of three dear friends who--as they burned away in their 5th floor walkups--had only their artistic "families" to tend their terrifying disease, and later, to mourn them. 

On my side, things were far more casual. I'd come to hear and see a spectacle with great rock songs.  You'd have to have lived under the proverbial rock not to have heard any music by Queen--even if it's just the football anthem We Will Rock You. Somebody to Love is one of my all-time favorites--and, along with Radio Ga-Ga--one of today's ear worms.

My sons were growing up when Queen was knocking out hits. "Kid" music made its way from behind closed bedroom doors into my ears. While I've always loved classical music and opera as well as rock'n'roll, I never doubted the musicality of this band. To me, Queen's music was operatic, if it not 'opera.' And it wasn't just the lead singer. The other band members seemed to hear the music resident in the spoken word as well. Even when lyrics don't appear to make much sense, the words themselves, the sounds and the mouthfeel, become essential parts of their electrifying composition.

The plot is pretty sanitized -- maybe even homogenized? That, in the end, didn't really detract from my enjoyment. I was a working mom when Queen strode onto the scene and had no time to follow the dramas surrounding rock personalities, so the story was mostly news to me. I really liked this movie far more than I'd anticipated, because of the unexpected sweetness of the story. It was romantic, in a way, with dark moments and all.

Bohemian Rhapsody begins as the freakish, sexually ambiguous and talented hero finds first acceptance and then unlikely stardom through hooking up with a band at the precise moment their lead singer decamps. Farouk--or Freddie, as he christened himself--has finally found freedom to express the craziness and the talent inside. He and the band enter into  touring and performing show-biz destiny.

The dark moment comes when Freddie beaks up the group in order to pursue a solo career. The change doesn't make heart (or even self-preservation!) sense, for deep down Freddie knows he's abandoned his musical family--in a way, his only safe place. The script is evenhanded; no bones are made about that fact that this star needed his band as much as they needed him. Queen--just like the Beatles--was a creative partnership. 

After a plea from his ex-wife, Freddie asks pardon of the other three band members, and Queen goes on to their epic performance at Live Aid. There isn't a focus on it, but we all know that Freddie has also received his AIDS death sentence.

I came away not only liking the movie, but the characters. Here's a show biz story where you expect bad decisions, drugs, fabulous music, and walks on the kinkiest of wild sides, but it resolves on such a quiet, decent--almost domestic--note. Self-knowledge, willingness to forgive and plain old human honesty bring this musical family back together again. A small thing, in the landscape of human triumph, you might think, but this old woman didn't really need another dose of darkness.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8Eg-mWdDLc

Freddie, who loved opera, performing with the divine Monserrat Caballe, one of his idols.



~~Juliet Waldron 

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*Yes we're all unique, like snowflakes, but some of us have far more curliques than others!



        

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I'm excited about new covers!

Red Magic recently got a re-brand--a new cover and a re-title. It is now Zauberkraft~Red, just in time for Halloween.  It was initially hard to chose a title for this story, back when I was grappling with that. In my long ago 'tweens, I'd been a fan of Baroness Orczy and so it was tempting to try to write that niche-within-a-niche version of "historical romance." Alpine Austria isn't exactly a popular venue and the books are cross-genre.  I'm the first to admit the Zauberkraft series crosses the abyss from Zauberkraft-Red's witchy romance into the fantasy (with a nice red dollop of horror) that is Zauberkraft-Black.

Zauberkraft-Red began because I had a character who wouldn't stop talking. This was Constanze Mozart's lover from Mozart's Wife (now titled The Intimate Mozart.) This guy was already a tall, dark, handsome and rather dangerous leading man type, who, however, turned out to be have unexpectedly decent, warm-hearted center. By the end of the Mozart story, he is indeed The Rake Reformed. 

When this fellow's property-minded family insist upon his marriage to a pretty, horsey, immature cousin who is just sixteen, he, now on the rebound, decides his roving days are over. She, however, doesn't believe a word he says--as well she might. As you can imagine, there is a book's worth of relationship work ahead for both of them.

At his alpine estate, the young woman finds her surroundings decidedly creepy and lonely. The jagged, snow-capped mountain behind the manor is a palpable presence. The freeman peasants who work the estate celebrate the older, weirder holidays as well as the newer Christian ones. Sighting these, she begins to anxiously ruminate upon a frightening experience from her childhood.

On the day of her arrival, the heroine is given a house tour which ends with her husband's bed chamber, separate from her own. After getting over the shock of his Height-of-Fashion 18th Century French pornographic bed curtains, she finds someone she did not expect lounging on the pillows--a cat, who is large, black and fluffy.

As a proper 18th Century lady she is now surprised to discover that her hunky new husband has such a "feminine" pet. The cat's name is "Furst," which is German for "First," which was often the short-cut title for a leader. I'm not sure where the inspiration for Furst came from, except that I wanted to slightly blow up the image of a romance's leading man with a "wussy" fondness for cats.

Furst is not completely based upon an actual animal companion, as many of the other cats in my books are. He's most like my own over-the-rainbow Katter Murr, who was named for E.T.A. Hoffman's (of The Nutcracker fame) illustrious pet. Hoffman's cat was a gray tiger, but our Murr was a barn-found Maine-Coonish sort of feline.

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Zauberkraft~Black  is is a no-holds-barred All Hallows' Eve story. Here, twenty+ years on from the first book, the now grown soldier son of the original couple returns to his childhood home, just after the last violent gasp of the Napoleonic Wars.

Goran has just left Vienna after discovering that his fiance has run off with an older and far wealthier nobleman. Not only that, but he's wounded from a decade's experience of the brutality of war. He's only twenty-seven, but he's grown utterly cynical about politics. His leader, the Austrian Emperor, switched sides when Vienna was threatened by Napoleon's forces. As a result, he, like other  Austrian military men, had been forced to fight first against Napoleon and then for him, a political decision which is firmly stuck in his craw.

As Goran arrives at at this rural estate where he grew up, he sees that things are in a bad way. Men left for the wars and many did not return, so barns and houses, left empty, are falling into ruin. Not only that, but here, in the mountainous back of beyond, there have been attacks by bandits and roaming gangs-- rogue soldiers for whom looting and killing has become a way of life.

Within hours of Goran's arrival, while he is taking a self-pitying ramble around the land, bottle in hand, he finds a May Day party being celebrated. He decides to party for a time with his tenants, and then, numbed with drink, begin the dreary task of listening to the old men complain about the state of things. Later that night, however, the celebrants let their young master into an ancient secret, one which brings all manner of bizarre changes into his life. Goran discovers that he has even more responsibilities and ties to this land--and to the people who live here than he--or even his parents before him--have hitherto imagined. 

Happy Halloween or Samhain or All Hallows' 

--your preference!

~~Juliet Waldron

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Kitchen Apparition

http://amzn.to/1TDh07s  My Mozart  ISBN:  1927476364

What we’ve had here today has been sun, clouds, and a sort of golden light falling through autumnal trees that I think of as Don Giovanni weather. And what, you ask, makes me call it that? Well, it’s the end of October now and we are approaching Halloween, the time of year, when, in 1787, to thunderous applause and many encores, that opera was first performed. The city was Prague, not Vienna, because by that time the arbiters of taste in the latter place had decided that Mozart was no longer cool. The infamous con man, Casanova, may have sat in with Lorenzo DaPonte and Mozart, while the libretto was written, lending his own unsavory life experiences to the twists and turns of the plot.

When I entered one of those OCD states of mind to which I am prone, in the mid-eighties, it was All Mozart All The Time at our house. I began to write two Mozart novels, “Mozart’s Wife” and “My Mozart.” Wouldn’t want anyone checking out the titles to wonder what the subject was.

http://amzn.to/1Vy47lm  Mozart’s Wife  ISBN:  1461109612

This happened on a late October Saturday. The silver maples were raincoat yellow. The sky had been clear blue all morning until after lunch, but after, the wind rose and a fleet of puffy, gray-bottomed clouds began to put  a lid on things. I was doing housework, still attempting the working woman’s bit where you go double time and do lots of housework and cooking over weekends. Of course, I was blasting Don Giovanni, saturating my cells with every chord—just as I used to do all through the '60's and ‘70’s with rock’n’roll.     

Husband was off somewhere, and the house was empty of teenage sons, too, so the only nerves I was fraying were my own. In those days I had a fabulous pair of pink high top sneakers that looked ever so good with jeans. Jeepers, this was a long time ago--back in the last century...

What happened in my kitchen that afternoon is the only supernatural encounter I’ve had in this house. I think there genuinely are no ghosts here; the house was built in 1948. There has been anger, violence, and grief, but no deaths. So, in this case the "supernatural" experience focused on me.

Looking back, I can see that I'd overdosed on Mozart. And, on this day, too much Don Giovanni, too much dwelling in and on the stories of Herr WAM in which I had been immersed, re-imagining and writing in a Sheldon-Cooper-like spasm of self-indulgence. This led Mozart's dynamic, charismatic spirit, drawn by womanly hero-worship as well as the sound of his music, to pass the gate.

Nanina contemplates the skull of her maestro

The Stromboli dough I'd prepared earlier lay ready to roll out, ready to receive meat, cheese, tomato sauce, and sweet pepper, when my progress was interrupted by a loud creak followed by an unearthly groan. It was that old movie sound effect of the hinges of hell—or heaven—swinging open. It was so loud it overcame the flood of opera, pouring from the kitchen speakers.

I spun around and there he was, standing on my 1948-era brick pattern linoleum. Needless to say, after so much time he looked ghastly—the “great nosed Mozart” as a contemporary called him—shrunken, frail, his face lined with his final suffering—but undeniably present.

.

From "The Mozart Brothers" 

I saw him clear as day. My reaction—I'm not ashamed to admit—was fear. When the door opens at 3 a.m. in a dark bedroom while you are still half asleep, well, that's something you can explain as "dreams intruding upon reality." When, however, the door opens at 3 p.m. on a sun-through- clouds-afternoon, while you construct a mundane kid-pleasing Stromboli it was darn alarming.

I leapt backwards, reaching gazelle-like heights* I've never before achieved, landing all the way across the kitchen. By the time the time those pink shoes hit the vinyl, though, my ghostly idol had gone.  



~~Juliet Waldron

The Lennon-McCartney of the 18th Century

 

Mozart's Wife

 

The tenor, Michael Kelly, wrote a memoir which remains interesting to anyone searching for Mozart stories, particularly about the Marriage of Figaro. (The Austrian Emperor and therefore everyone else in Vienna referred to Kelly as "Ochelli" because "The names of all Irishmen begins with an 'O". Therefore, OChelli he was--in Vienna.)  Lesson #1--never correct the Emperor of Austria if you would like to keep your job at the royal opera house...
 

From the tenor Michael Kelly’s "Reminiscences," published 1826 :

 

“I remember the first rehearsal of the full band, Mozart was on the stage with his crimson pelisse and gold-laced cocked hat, giving the time of the music to the orchestra. Figaro’s son, “Non piu andrai, farballone amoroso…” Bennuci gave with the greatest animation and power of voice.

 

I was standing next to Mozart, who, sotto voce, was repeating, “Bravo! Bravo! Bennuci!” and when Bennuci came to the fine passage, “Cherubino, alla vittoria, alla Gloria militar” which he gave out with Stentorian lungs, the effect was electricity itself, for the whole of the performers on the stage and those in the orchestra, as if actuated by one feeling of delight, vociferated Bravo! Bravo! Maestro! Viva, viva grande Mozart! Those in the orchestra I thought would never have ceased applauding, by beating the bows of their violins against the music desks. The little man acknowledged, by repeated obeisances, his thanks for the distinguished mark of enthusiastic applause bestowed upon him…” 

 

No more, you amorous butterfly,

Will you go fluttering round by night and day,

Disturbing the peace of every maid,

You pocket Narcissus, you Adonis of love,

No more will you have those fine feathers,

That light and dashing cap,

Those curls, those airs and graces,

That rosy womanish cheek.

You’ll be among warriors, by Bacchus!

Long moustaches, knapsack tightly on,

Musket on your shoulder, saber at your side,

Head erect and bold of visage,

A great helmet, waving plumes,

Lots of honor, little money,

And instead of the fandango,

Marching through the mud.

Over mountains, through valleys,

In snow and days of listless heat,

To the sound of blunderbusses,

Shells and cannons

Whose shots shall make your ears sing

On every note.

Cherubino, onto victory,

Onto Military Glory!

 

(Cherubino, alla vittoria, alla Gloria militar!)

 

This is one of the most famous (and fun!) arias in all of opera. Set to Mozart’s most stirring martial music, it is mockingly sung to Cherubino, the teen would-be lady-killer, by the older servant,  wily Figaro. The Count who rules them all has just caught the boy hanging around once too often, first with his wife, and just now with Susanna, the pretty maid whom the Count is hot to seduce. As Cherubino is his ward and of noble blood, he can’t just murder him, (much as he'd like to,) so he's ordered him into the army.

 

The military is still the classic solution for boys who suffer from a chronic overload of testosterone and who are causing problems around your house—or on the street. Written in the late 18^th Century, when war still had a cloud of romance hanging round it—no machine guns, tanks, drones or poison gas just yet—it’s straight on the mark. “Glory” is meant ironically. Figaro is sobering the boy up, saying that soldiering means real danger, exhaustion and suffering. So get ready, kid!

 

It’s a nice example of DaPonte’s nuanced writing, words that inspired Mozart to write his most famous scores. Figaro first sings mocking praises—“Pocket Narcissus” has to be one of the best put-downs ever. Then he gets tougher. There will be no further perfumed romps in My Lady’s chambers. Your new bosom companions, my son, will be hardened soldiers--and your 60 lb. knapsack. No more dances, only marching, almost always in the worst weather.  In the 18^th Century, too, armies were often chronically without pay, not only because of the usual bad planning, but because wrecking havoc on civilians was (and, heck, still is) traditionally part of the game. DaPonte and Mozart, both freelance artists, know only too well that honor without the cash to back it up was a hollow thing indeed.

 

For the coup de grace, Figaro describes the pain which bombs and gunshots will cause your ears. It’s a misery particularly singled out by DaPonte and Mozart for Cherubino, a musical boy who writes beautiful love songs for all his girlfriends.

 

No more honey-dripping for you, Punk! From now on, your ears will “sing” to you of war! 

 ~~Juliet Waldron

Take a little walk into my 18th Century world:

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And because it's Nanina Gottlieb's birthday today and because she too--aged 11--sang in this opera:

 

Nanina's Mozart story

LODESTONE LETTERS

BUY FROM AMAZON

I’ve always had an interest in reading biographies of famous people, but it didn’t take me too many years to realize that these books, by nature, are only the opinion of a single writer. That’s when I started to read the notes and the bibliographies and these soon became as interesting as the book itself. This naïve reader had just “discovered” an author’s finest source material. 

As I, back in the day of inter-library loan, began to pursue these leads, I discovered the most exciting material of all, letters and diaries. The language isn't always easy for a modern reader. Eighteenth Century language has a circuitous, verbose style which tends to disguise the emotional thrust of the message. From these letters and journals, however, a voice still speaks; the past enters our present in a breath-taking way.

Here’s one which paints a picture of the realities of 18^th Century travel, of an Albany still forested, as the Marquis de Chastellux describes a Revolutionary War winter visit to General Schuyler’s mansion.

 

“It was a difficult question to know where I should cross the Hudson…for it was neither sufficiently frozen to pass over the ice, nor free enough from flakes to venture it in a boat. …I was only twenty miles from Albany; so that after a continued journey through a forest of fir trees, I arrived at one o’clock on the banks of the Hudson…A handsome house half way up the bank opposite the ferry seemed to attract my attention and to invite strangers to stop at General Schuyler’s, who is proprietor as well as architect…The sole difficulty therefore consisted of passing the river. While the boat was making its way with difficulty through the flakes of ice, which we were obliged to break as we advanced…”

Envision this world—so green, so cold! All you have between you and Old Man Winter is wool, felt and hide, and your feet and hands are continually numb. The Hudson flows like slate under an only single shade-up grayscale sky. A twinkle of snow sinks into the surface. The pines hiss, and the wind picks up as we are ferried across the water, the drifting ice striking the boat and icy droplets of water strike our face.  

I get inspiration from this stuff! Here’s another, a charming (and alarming) view into the life of Mozart, a musician on the English leg of his “world” tour, aged eight years and five months:

“Witness as I myself of most of these extraordinary facts, I must own that I could not help suspecting his father imposed with regard to the real of the boy, thou he had not only a most childish appearance, but likewise had all the actions of the stage of life.

For example, whilst he was playing to me, a favorite cat came in, upon which he immediately left his harpsichord, nor could we bring him back for a considerable time.

He would also run about the room with a stick between his legs by way of a horse. ..” 

~Daines Barrington, 28 September 1769, report to the Secretary of the Royal Society in London.  

I was happy to read that the little boy was allowed to have time with a favorite cat, that Leopold Mozart (“Papa”) didn’t play the martinet and order Wolfgang straight back to the piano. Like little boys today playing with cars, little Mozart would, in his imagination, ride horses.

I’m thinking, really excellent ones, matched, of course, maybe white or dappled gray…”

Sometimes these surviving letters say a great deal about kinks in personality, some not so pleasant, things you’d rather wish your subject hadn’t said, something a writer has to ponder and work to understand. Sometimes, when this happens, you may have to rewrite an entire character.  

It’s understandable—not to snoopy writers and historians, of course— that wives of men judged ‘famous” by their contemporaries often burned and bowdlerized their husband’s surviving letters—all and any they could lay their hands on.  In deference to those wives, whose spirits have been so forthcoming to their humble servant, here is a brief sample of something I'd rather not have read:

“Received December 22 of Alexander Hamilton six hundred dollars on account of a sum of one thousand dollars due me.”  ~James Reynolds

This is a receipt for the first part of the blackmail Hamilton would pay for his adultery with Reynolds’ wife Maria. She must have been a hot number, because talk about shooting yourself in the foot—this particular bad move just about takes the cake, both politically and personally! As I’ve studied his wife, Betsy Schuyler, I’ve grown to have the profoundest respect for her. She was a woman of convictions, the kind which helped her survive fifty years beyond the death of her husband. For me, she's become the  embodiment of the word "lady."  

Here's a happier excerpt (a flirtatious double entendre) from Nov 19, 1798, some years after his infidelity, sent by Hamilton to his wife:  "I am always happy My Dear Eliza when I can steal a few moments to sit down and write to you.  You are my good genius; of that kind which the ancient Philsophers called a familiar; and you know very well that I am glad to be in every way as familiar as possible with you."

  

And last, a charming diary entry, one from James McHenry, of later Fort McHenry fame, about Revolutionary War evenings while quartered with the rest of Washington’s ADC’s upon a substantial Pennsylvania household.

“Eight miles from Moors & 25 from Philadelphia. Head-quarters at Jonathan Fells (Doylestown). A raining evening. The company within doors includes a pretty, fullfaced, youthfull, playfull lass and a Family of Quakers meek and unsuspicious. Hamilton thou shalt not tread on this ground. I mark it for my own.”

This tells me that the recreational behavior of army officers/staff hasn’t changed a whole lot over the course of the last 250 years. It brings us, readers and writers,  closer to a world that is, in many ways, technically and socially, alien.  We no longer have to trust ourselves to a small ferry in sketchy winter conditions in order to cross the Hudson and arrive at the warmth, food and good company of the big house, but down at the core, we humans remain the same.

 

~~Juliet Waldron

 

See all my historical novels at:

 

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