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'Crudel! Perche finora farmi languir cosi

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rich...@gmail.com

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Feb 14, 2012, 4:57:00 PM2/14/12
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I think this must be one of the most sublime pieces of music ever
penned.

I have been listening to the Emilio de Gorgorzo/Emma Eames duet for
days, on the Marston label, and I can't get their rendition (with dear
Emma doing a wee bit of wonderful ornamentation) out of my mind,
happily so.

It's not on You Tube, and there is nothing quite as good in
performance, but this will do.

I know that there are other pieces of Mozart that embody so much
blissful feeling (I'd put the Papagano/Papagana duet right at the top)
but few have the gentleness this does, which perhaps even overwhelms
the drama of the situation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEEZ5JUts8E


Dorme Riposa

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Feb 15, 2012, 12:14:19 AM2/15/12
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On Feb 14, 1:57 pm, "richer...@hotnail.com" <richer...@gmail.com>
wrote:
And I've just been watching the "Sissi" trilogy of movies starring
Boehm's son Karlheinz as Franz Joseph, made in the mid-1950s before he
grew all weird in "Peeping Tom" and "Fox and His Friends," and Romy
Schneider before she met Alain Delon and joined the international
celebrity set. The son doesn't resemble his father in the least, and
his approach to playing the Kaiser is much less creepy than that of
his father as the "loyal" Viennese conductor during WW2.

wagnerfan

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Feb 15, 2012, 4:43:32 AM2/15/12
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Yes I have seen those films (which Schneider herself rather made fun
of later on). Delon was the great love of Schneiders life. She
continues to be venerated in Germany and Austria -it seems that new
books about her come out all the time discussing her up and down life
and tragic end -she really gave up after her son who she adored died
in a freak accident while in his teens -- he accidently impaled
himself on a fence, punctured his femoral artery and lost too much
blood by the time he got to the hospital - she really lost the will
to live after that. Wagner Fan

Dorme Riposa

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Feb 15, 2012, 5:41:01 AM2/15/12
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Yes, horrible. I remember reading about it at the time of her death.

She shared with the empress Elisabeth (Sissi) her wasp waist. She was
even more wasp-waisted in the movie about the young Victoria, made a
year before the first Sissi movie. She was 16. Ernst Marischka, the
director of all four of those movies, had been associated, I believe,
with a Fritz Kreisler operetta on the topic of Sissi in the 1920s or
30s, though I can't find corroboration online.

Dorme Riposa

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Feb 15, 2012, 5:53:52 AM2/15/12
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Found it: the year was 1932: from the Wikipedia article on the empress
Elisabeth: "In 1932 the comic operetta Sissi premiered in Vienna.
Composed by Fritz Kreisler, the libretto was written by Ernst and
Hubert Marischka, with orchestrations by Robert Russell Bennett."

Besides the Austrians feeling more optimistic in the 1950s than they
had in the 1940s, I can imagine that England's Elisabeth may have been
part of the inspiration for the making of these movies, as it also may
have been for "The Swan" with Grace Kelly, made during the same period.

Stelucia

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Feb 15, 2012, 9:08:06 AM2/15/12
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On Feb 15, 5:14 am, Dorme Riposa <davidj.meln...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> And I've just been watching the "Sissi" trilogy of movies starring
> Boehm's son Karlheinz as Franz Joseph, made in the mid-1950s before he
> grew all weird in "Peeping Tom" and "Fox and His Friends," and Romy
> Schneider before she met Alain Delon and joined the international
> celebrity set. The son doesn't resemble his father in the least, and
> his approach to playing the Kaiser is much less creepy than that of
> his father as the "loyal" Viennese conductor during WW2.- Hide quoted text -
>
Sissi the movie remains quite popular in the German speaking
countries. While working in Germany and Switzerland recently, I've
seen it on TV at least three times in two years. Same could be said
about documentaries on Scheinder's life, I've seen three different
documentaries during my stay. Because she was born in Austria of a
German mother and lived in France, all three countries claim her as
one of their own.
I had no idea that Karlheinz was Karl Böhm's son.

rich...@gmail.com

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Feb 15, 2012, 9:20:13 AM2/15/12
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Actually the Sissi story is quite popular in Austria and the German
speaking world independent of the films, and well before them. I don't
think her (the Empress') life story resonates here at all, but it's
the subject of what is perhaps the most popular and enduring Austian/
German operetta/musical that is currently on the boards.

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