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Warning: Rokoko Language Alert
Nov. 9th, 2019 11:48 amStill in an Amadeus mood, I see the original premiere of the stage play was the occasion of Margeret Thatcher displaying the kind of reality reordering that currently has become almost universal among conservatives of all calibres. Wrote Peter Hall, who directed the original stage production:
She was not pleased. In her best headmistress style, she gave me a severe wigging for putting on a play that depicted Mozart as a scatological imp with a love of four-letter words. It was inconceivable, she said, that a man who wrote such exquisite and elegant music could be so foul-mouthed. I said that Mozart's letters proved he was just that: he had an extraordinarily infantile sense of humour (...) "I don't think you heard what I said", replied the Prime Minister. "He couldn't have been like that". I offered (and sent) a copy of Mozart's letters to Number Ten the next day; I was even thanked by the appropriate Private Secretary. But it was useless: the Prime Minister said I was wrong, so wrong I was.
( Cut to protect minors from Mozart as well as Habsburg/Bourbon marital difficulties )
What I'm trying to get at: context! The 18th century was far more comfortable discussing bodily functions than the two subsequent ones, and Mozart might have been an extraordinary musical genius, but when it came to his attitude towards sex and waste, he fit right in with his contemporaries. :)
She was not pleased. In her best headmistress style, she gave me a severe wigging for putting on a play that depicted Mozart as a scatological imp with a love of four-letter words. It was inconceivable, she said, that a man who wrote such exquisite and elegant music could be so foul-mouthed. I said that Mozart's letters proved he was just that: he had an extraordinarily infantile sense of humour (...) "I don't think you heard what I said", replied the Prime Minister. "He couldn't have been like that". I offered (and sent) a copy of Mozart's letters to Number Ten the next day; I was even thanked by the appropriate Private Secretary. But it was useless: the Prime Minister said I was wrong, so wrong I was.
( Cut to protect minors from Mozart as well as Habsburg/Bourbon marital difficulties )
What I'm trying to get at: context! The 18th century was far more comfortable discussing bodily functions than the two subsequent ones, and Mozart might have been an extraordinary musical genius, but when it came to his attitude towards sex and waste, he fit right in with his contemporaries. :)
