Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2014 December 12

Welcome to the Wikipedia Entertainment Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

December 12

Ratmir's part in Glinka's Ruslan and Ludmila: Why sung by a woman?

Why is the role of the Khazar prince Ratmir in Glinka's Ruslan and Ludmila sung by a woman contralto? (And, incidentally, why are the WP articles for the poem and the opera spelled differently when the title is exactly the same in Russian?) Contact Basemetal here 11:28, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

I dunno about the first one, but Ludmila and Lyudmila are both common transliterations (so is Ludmilla), so maybe one is more common for the opera and the other is for the poem, in which case WP:COMMONNAME would result in this inconsistency? But I'm not sure if this is actually the case. Double sharp (talk) 12:35, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

See Breeches role for the tradition of having male opera characters portrayed by women (Cherubino from The Marriage of Figaro is one of the best-known examples) - the list in that article includes Ratmir. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 13:08, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Catherine the Great in trousersbreeches

(after edit conflict) Regarding the "why", it does seem to have been a "Russian thing" at that very period.

"Breeches parts or "trouser roles" (travesti in French) for women represented the last gasp of a tradition from eighteenth-century opera seria, opera buffa, and early Romantic opera. Central to early-nineteenth-century operas such as Rossini's Tancredi (1813), these roles were soon eclipsed by the rise of the Romantic tenor. The last truly major "trouser role" from Italian opera was Romeo in Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi (1830). After that, the female singer specializing in trouser roles had to content herself with playing young boys marginal to the operatic plot, usually shepherds or pages. The two trouser roles from Glinka's operas, the orphan boy Vanya and the poet-prince Ratmir, gave the tradition a longer life, and a more central one, in Russia. Indeed, until Tchaikovskii re-conceived Pushkin's Tatiana Larina as an operatic heroine, Vanya, a youth who heroically gallops to Moscow to warn Russian troops of a threatened attack by Poles in 1612, very possibly represented the best-loved Russian operatic role for women. Perhaps Catherine the Great's fondness for donning male attire when traveling, reviewing military troops, or having her portrait painted retained its imaginative potency for early-neineteenth-century Russia."

(Julie A. Buckler, The Literary Lorgnette: Attending Opera in Imperial Russia, Stanford University Press, 2000, pp74f, ISBN 9780804732475) ---Sluzzelin talk 13:30, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I had been wondering if there was something specific about Ratmir (in the poem or the legend) but apparently not: I hadn't noticed that both of Glinka's operas contain breeches roles so it seems his operas had to have at least one. In general you'd expect a young boy not a adult with a girlfriend (then there's Bellini's Romeo, who however is himself supposed to be very young). I sort of see why Glinka chose the Khazar Ratmir as his breeches part. There was really no other candidate. In the staging of the opera by the Mariinsky in 1995 (directed by Valery Gergiev) the stage director (Lotfi Mansouri) had the brilliant idea to go stick a fake beard on Larissa Diadkova's face. Made her look like a circus freak. Contact Basemetal here 14:39, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

• Another one: the mezzo-soprano part of Hunyadi Mátyás (boy 13-14) in Erkel Ferenc's 1844 opera Hunyadi László. I wonder though to what extent a boy or a child (e.g. Cupid in Orpheus in the Underworld) should be considered a real breeches part. Contact Basemetal here 03:04, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Simpsons question

Lisa the Beauty Queen was just on and in the episode there is a line where Krusty the Clown, when referring to the pageant runner up taking the place of the winner, says something along the lines of "don't say it'll never happen. Remember what's her name...Click Click" whilst miming photography. Is this just a throwaway line or is it a reference to something in real life? I would have asked on the article talk page but feared being hit by a "not a forum" zealot. Keresaspa (talk) 19:27, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

This is the proper place for a question like this K. If memory serves the line is referring to Vanessa L. Williams who resigned her Miss America title when Penthouse published nude photos of her taken when she was young. Now that occurred nine years before The Simpsons episode and I have a vague memory that the same sort of thing happened to another beauty contest winner closer to '92. Another editor may be able to confirm that. MarnetteD|Talk 20:01, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Most likely it was a direct reference to Williams, as it was a national news story in the day (partly because Williams was also the first black Miss America winner). --McDoobAU93 20:18, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Wasn't reported in my neck of the woods as far as I know but it makes sense. Thanks all :) Keresaspa (talk) 20:45, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

coffee skit

I think this brief audio skit is the one titled "My Husband" on Gold Turkey.

"My husband is very particular about his coffee ... I'm not saying he'd lock me in the basement or push me down the stairs if I didn't make a perfect cup of coffee ..."

Chevy Chase is the husband, according to my aural memory. Who's the wife? —Tamfang (talk) 22:48, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

The only female artist listed on the article is Gilda Radner, so quite possibly her. --McDoobAU93 23:29, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

I can't say it's not Radner; whoever it is, she's not using her normal voice. —Tamfang (talk) 00:33, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

This page says that the sketch is performed by Chase and someone named Patti Maison. Deor (talk) 03:04, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Fab, thanks! —Tamfang (talk) 09:39, 16 December 2014 (UTC)