The 'Believable Hoax' or 'Tall-Story' Thread
Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2009 4:19 pm
Pure fantasy this. You'll get the idea. Some years ago I posted the following request. The date? The First of April of course. It caught a few people, and I'm quite proud of the detail - so here it is again for some to enjoy afresh:
Another Operatic Fantasy
Since opera fantasies by Thalberg, Liszt, Tausig and their various acolytes are all the rage currently, I wondered if anyone had yet managed to source a PDF of a score that was thought lost for most of the last 150 years. Although the authorship was regarded as doubtful by many when the work was discovered in an antiquarian bookshop in Port de Clignancourt in 1992, it is now generally attributed to Alkan:
Fantaisie sur motives de l'opera “Le Festin des Salops ou Le Roi s'Abuse” par Delibes, op posth.
Quite when Alkan penned this work is unclear at present, although recent attempts at analysing the acid content and the Carbon14/Carbon16 ratio in the paper point to a date in mid March 1855 as being the date for the source materials used in creating this contentious work, thus placing the composition sometime shortly after this date. It is known from Alkan's memoirs that he was in the habit of purchasing freshly made manuscript for the final copies of each composition, and to this end his Aunt Hermione was often sent out to pick up fresh manuscript along with the daily supplies of bread, milk and sausage on which the Alkan household subsisted in their meagre garret existence. So the work may well date from very early in April 1855, making it exactly 150 years old today.
Quite what happened to the manuscript is not entirely clear, although an analysis of the papers has revealed traces of opium and cat hair. The manuscript itself was found in an old wicker basket retrieved from a Parisian attic along with much other furniture of the Napoleon III period, so it is surmised that Alkan had for some reason quickly attempted to conceal his 'stash' of illegal substances wrapping them in the manuscript of the Fantaisie and stuffing it at the bottom of his Aunt Hermione’s knitting basket, where it presumably lay forgotten for far too many years.
The history of the Delibes opera, the score of which is now sadly lost, is itself somewhat obscure. The text of the opera is based by a hand unknown on alternative scenarios extracted 'Scripti Marginalibus' as it were from Victor Hugo's more famous conflation of Seventeenth Century manners, fashions and vagaries. The first performance was documented as having been held in the provincial town of Nancy as early as 1851, but after a brief spell in which one of the more simple but memorable arias achieved notoriety by being adopted by the mob at the barricades during the ‘opium siege’ of the prison at Les Invalides in 1853, the work sank to an unwarranted obscurity.
Apparently the key moment in the opera focuses on a duet between the King of the title and a black cat, which had to be trained to miaow on cue in order for the duet to make its due effect - achieved apparently by the conductor tugging a cord attached to the cat’s tail! Legend has it that the cat in fact belonged to Alkan’s Aunt Hermione who was at that time resident in provincial Nancy and employed as the stage-doorkeeper at the local Alhambra Theatre, and so it is assumed that Hermione acquainted her nephew with the opera when she became his housekeeper early in 1855. Legend also has it that the black cat was in the habit of sleeping in Hermione’s wicker knitting basket.
As a coda to this tale, it is known that Alkan died following a fall from a step-ladder in his library. Those with fanciful religious inclinations would have it that Alkan was reaching for his copy of the Talmud. But I prefer to believe he was retrieving his miscreant black cat who had for some reason become unaccountably lodged on the top bookshelf, next to Alkan’s early copy of the Bach Gesamtausgabe.
Alkan's extravagant Fantaisie would enrich our lives enormously should anyone be able to furnish a copy!
Rob
PS: Aunt Hermione's black cat was called, not unsurprisingly, 'Mefistiaow'!
Another Operatic Fantasy
Since opera fantasies by Thalberg, Liszt, Tausig and their various acolytes are all the rage currently, I wondered if anyone had yet managed to source a PDF of a score that was thought lost for most of the last 150 years. Although the authorship was regarded as doubtful by many when the work was discovered in an antiquarian bookshop in Port de Clignancourt in 1992, it is now generally attributed to Alkan:
Fantaisie sur motives de l'opera “Le Festin des Salops ou Le Roi s'Abuse” par Delibes, op posth.
Quite when Alkan penned this work is unclear at present, although recent attempts at analysing the acid content and the Carbon14/Carbon16 ratio in the paper point to a date in mid March 1855 as being the date for the source materials used in creating this contentious work, thus placing the composition sometime shortly after this date. It is known from Alkan's memoirs that he was in the habit of purchasing freshly made manuscript for the final copies of each composition, and to this end his Aunt Hermione was often sent out to pick up fresh manuscript along with the daily supplies of bread, milk and sausage on which the Alkan household subsisted in their meagre garret existence. So the work may well date from very early in April 1855, making it exactly 150 years old today.
Quite what happened to the manuscript is not entirely clear, although an analysis of the papers has revealed traces of opium and cat hair. The manuscript itself was found in an old wicker basket retrieved from a Parisian attic along with much other furniture of the Napoleon III period, so it is surmised that Alkan had for some reason quickly attempted to conceal his 'stash' of illegal substances wrapping them in the manuscript of the Fantaisie and stuffing it at the bottom of his Aunt Hermione’s knitting basket, where it presumably lay forgotten for far too many years.
The history of the Delibes opera, the score of which is now sadly lost, is itself somewhat obscure. The text of the opera is based by a hand unknown on alternative scenarios extracted 'Scripti Marginalibus' as it were from Victor Hugo's more famous conflation of Seventeenth Century manners, fashions and vagaries. The first performance was documented as having been held in the provincial town of Nancy as early as 1851, but after a brief spell in which one of the more simple but memorable arias achieved notoriety by being adopted by the mob at the barricades during the ‘opium siege’ of the prison at Les Invalides in 1853, the work sank to an unwarranted obscurity.
Apparently the key moment in the opera focuses on a duet between the King of the title and a black cat, which had to be trained to miaow on cue in order for the duet to make its due effect - achieved apparently by the conductor tugging a cord attached to the cat’s tail! Legend has it that the cat in fact belonged to Alkan’s Aunt Hermione who was at that time resident in provincial Nancy and employed as the stage-doorkeeper at the local Alhambra Theatre, and so it is assumed that Hermione acquainted her nephew with the opera when she became his housekeeper early in 1855. Legend also has it that the black cat was in the habit of sleeping in Hermione’s wicker knitting basket.
As a coda to this tale, it is known that Alkan died following a fall from a step-ladder in his library. Those with fanciful religious inclinations would have it that Alkan was reaching for his copy of the Talmud. But I prefer to believe he was retrieving his miscreant black cat who had for some reason become unaccountably lodged on the top bookshelf, next to Alkan’s early copy of the Bach Gesamtausgabe.
Alkan's extravagant Fantaisie would enrich our lives enormously should anyone be able to furnish a copy!
Rob
PS: Aunt Hermione's black cat was called, not unsurprisingly, 'Mefistiaow'!