> Yes, it was my questions that were used--or rather abused. They
> managed to screw up four out of the five used. I don't know if
> the worst example was "Go To Hell. Go Directly To Hell. Do Not
> Pass Jail. Do Not Collect Your Girlfriend" which was read correctly.
> but then the patently wrong Don Giovanni (girlfriend in the singular!)
> was accepted as a right answer instead of the intended Faust (in
> Berlioz's "Damnation de Faust), or whether it was the nonsensical
> version "Take A Ride On The Ram" when I had written "Take A Ride
> On The Sleipnir." But it was fun, anyway.
How could they possibly mess up the questions/answers in such a way-? (I sense a conspiracy...)
Hearing the name of an LBO listmember in that operatic context brought to mind a long-ago exposition (by an unnameable personage who used to frequent this list) on - well, I suppose it would be incorrect to say "Marxist underpinnings," but at the very least "significant plot details which would be favorable to a Marxist understanding of the state of things" in various well-known operatic works.
I thought it was interesting at the time (wish I'd saved the post - thought I had, but can't find it...) though I have to admit that notwithstanding my having heard scores of Saturday afternoon Met broadcasts over the years (and once - literally - stumbled backstage when they visited Minneapolis and I was a student), my ability to recall the storylines correctly is woefully inadequate. My inability to understand more than snippets of Italian/German contributes in no small measure, and also my frequent tendency to focus on pure sonics, letting the power of the music wash over me even to the extent that vocal utterances disentangle themselves from narrative and meaning.
But speaking of plots and characters, airing simultaneously with the Saturday afternoon Met broadcast is an unexpectedly compelling (especially given my usual musical proclivities) country and western show on the local community-oriented station, KFAI, which is always an alternative when the day calls for something other than cymbal crashes and arias. And then one inevitably begins to discern the parallels between the c&w and the opera...
--
/ dave /