AdamSmith

Outed!

https://youtube.com/watch?v=PtgKkifJ0Pw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvpOlzsWn4U

Turns out that, even with the vas deferens severed, the whole male body produces enough testosterone to let a eunuch perform more than satisfactorily. https://xhamster.com/videos/farinelli-1994-threesome-erotic-scene-mfm-3449047

Repost...

Repost.

It don't matter where I were born. It was (1959) far enough out into the suburbs to quality for Country. My being a singlet child did help a lot in persona development. (If I may be permitted such a Freudian thing. ) I be that boy, down to the least single chromosome. You can doubt that at yer own peril. Let me know which.

'Jonathan Frid - Father Figure' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiM8H-PV4WM

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2018/09/05/woodward-book-trump-dons-take-ctn-vpx.cnn

The topic/content is interering to me, so I wanted to share it here with others who may enjoy it. If it is not to your liking, do pass it by.

From Figaro To Don Giovanni In spite of his success as a pianist and composer, Mozart had serious financial worries, and they worsened as the famously fickle Viennese found other idols. One may calculate his likely income during his last five years, 1786–91, as being far larger than that of most musicians though much below that of the section of society with which he wanted to be associated; Leopold’s early advice to be aloof (“like an Englishman”) with his fellow musicians but friendly with the aristocracy had its price. His sense of being as good a man as any privileged nobleman led him and his wife into tastes that for his actual station in life, and his income, were extravagant. He saw a court appointment as a possible source of salvation but knew that the Italian musical influence at court, under the Kapellmeister Antonio Salieri, was powerful and exclusive—even if he and Salieri were never on less than friendly terms personally. Mozart, Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro)Cherubino's aria “Voi che sapete” in Act II of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro(The Marriage of Figaro), K 492; from a 1950 recording featuring soprano Sena Jurinac and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Herbert von Karajan.© Cefidom/Encyclopædia Universalis Success in the court opera house was all-important. Joseph II had now reverted to Italian opera, and since 1783 Mozart had been seeking suitable librettos (he had even started work on two but broke off when he came to realize their feebleness for his purpose). He had become acquainted with Lorenzo Da Ponte, an Italian abbé-adventurer of Jewish descent who was a talented poet and librettist to the court theatre. At Mozart’s suggestion he wrote a libretto, Le nozze di Figaro, based on Beaumarchais’s revolutionary comedy, Le Mariage de Figaro, but with most of the political sting removed. Nonetheless, the music of Figaro makes the social distinctions clear. Figaro, as well as the later opera Don Giovanni, treats the traditional figure of the licentious nobleman, but the earlier work does so on a more directly comic plane even though the undercurrents of social tension run stronger. Perhaps the central achievement of Figaro lies in its ensembles with their close link between music and dramatic meaning. The Act 3 Letter Duet, for instance, has a realistic representation of dictation with the reading back as a condensed recapitulation. The act finales, above all, show a broad, symphonic organization with each section worked out as a unit; for example, in the B-flat section of the Act 2 finale the tension of the count’s examination of Figaro is paralleled in the tonal scheme, with its return to the tonic only when the final question is resolved: a telling conjunction of music and drama. These features, coupled with the elaborate commentary on character and action that is embodied in the orchestral writing, add depth to the situations and seriousness to their resolution and set the work apart from the generality of Italian opere buffe. Illustration (c. 1914) of a scene from Mozart's opera Don Giovanni (1787), in which Don Giovanni attempts to seduce Zerlina.© Photos.com/Jupiterimages Figaro reached the stage on May 1, 1786, and was warmly received. There were nine performances in 1786 and a further 26 when it was revived in 1789–90—a success, but a modest one compared with certain operas of Martín y Soler and Giovanni Paisiello (to whose Il barbiere di Siviglia it was a sequel, and planned in direct competition). The opera did, however, enjoy outstanding popularity in Prague, and at the end of the year Mozart was invited to go to the Bohemian capital; he went in January 1787 and gave a new symphony there, the Prague (K 504), a demanding work that reflects his admiration for the capabilities of that city’s musicians. After accepting a further operatic commission for Prague, he returned to Vienna in February 1787. The characters Susanna (left) and Cherubino in a scene from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro.Ann Ronan Picture Library/Heritage-Images Mozart’s concert activities in Vienna were now on a modest scale. No Viennese appearances at all are recorded for 1787. In April he heard that his father was gravely ill. Mozart wrote him a letter of consolation putting forward a view of death (“this best and truest friend of mankind”) based on the teachings of Freemasonry, which he had embraced at the end of 1784. Leopold died in May 1787. Mozart’s music from this time includes the two string quintets K 515–516, arguably his supreme chamber works. Clearly this genre, with the opportunities it offered for richness of sonority and patterns of symmetry, had a particular appeal for him. The quintet in C Major (K 515) is the most expansive and most richly developed of all his chamber works, while the G Minor (K 516) has always been recognized for its depth of feeling, which in the circumstances it is tempting to regard as elegiac. From this period come a number of short but appealing lieder and three instrumental works of note: the Musikalischer Spass (Musical Joke), a good-humoured parody of bad music, in a vein Leopold would have liked (it was thought to have been provoked by his death until it was found that it was begun much earlier); Eine kleine Nachtmusik, the exquisite and much-loved serenade, probably intended for solo strings and written for a purpose that remains unknown (though it has been speculated that it was performed during the musical gatherings hosted by Gottfried von Jacquin); and a fine piano and violin sonata, K 526. Mozart, W.A.: Don GiovanniRecitativo “Orsù, spicciati presto” (“Come on now, hurry up”) from Act I, scene 4, of Mozart's Don Giovanni; from a 2001 recording by the Hungarian Radio Chorus and Nicolaus Esterházy Sinfonia, conducted by Michael Halász and featuring Bo Skovhus as Don Giovanni and Renato Girolami as Leporello.Courtesy of Naxos of America, Inc. Mozart, W.A.: Don GiovanniThe aria “Madamina, il catalogo e questo” (“My dear lady, this is a list”); from Act I, scene 5, of Mozart's Don Giovanni (1787); from a 2001 studio recording by the Hungarian Radio Chorus and the Nicolaus Esterházy Sinfonia, conducted by Michael Halász, featuring Renato Girolami as Leporello.Courtesy of Naxos of America, Inc. But Mozart’s chief occupation during 1787 was the composition of Don Giovanni, commissioned for production in Prague; it was given on October 29 and warmly received. Don Giovanniwas Mozart’s second opera based on a libretto by Da Ponte, who used as his model a libretto by Giovanni Bertati, set by Giuseppe Gazzaniga for Venice earlier in 1787. Da Ponte rewrote the libretto, inserting new episodes into the one-act original, which explains certain structural features. A difference in Mozart’s approach to the work—a dramma giocoso in the tradition of Carlo Goldoni that, because of its more serious treatment of character, had a greater expressive potential than an opera buffa—is seen in the extended spans of the score, with set-piece numbers often running into one another. As in Figaro, the two act finales are again remarkable: the first for the three stage bands that play dances for different social segments—a suggested social compatibility that is shattered by the Don’s attempted rape of the peasant Zerlina—the second for the supper scene in which the commendatore’s statue consigns Giovanni to damnation, with trombones to suggest the supernatural and with hieratic dotted rhythms, extreme chromaticism, and wildly lurching harmony as Giovanni is overcome. But it remains a comic opera, as is made clear through the figure of Leporello, who from under a table offers the common man’s wry or facetious observations; and at the end the surviving characters draw the moral in a cheerful sextet that has seemed jarring to later sensibilities more ready to identify with the rebellious Giovanni than with the restoration of social order that the sextet celebrates. The “demonic” character of the opera has caused it to exercise a special fascination for audiences, and it has given rise to a large critical, interpretative, and sometimes purely fanciful literature. The Last Travels On his return from Prague in mid-November 1787, Mozart was at last appointed to a court post, as Kammermusicus, in place of Gluck, who had died. It was largely a sinecure, the only requirement being that he should supply dance music for court balls, which he did, in abundance and with some distinction, over his remaining years. The salary of 800 gulden seems to have done little to relieve the Mozarts’ chronic financial troubles. Their debts, however, were never large, and they were always able to continue employing servants and owning a carriage; their anxieties were more a matter of whether they could live as they wished than whether they would starve. In 1788 a series of letters begging loans from a fellow Freemason, Michael Puchberg, began; Puchberg usually obliged, and Mozart seems generally to have repaid him promptly. He was deeply depressed during the summer, writing of “black thoughts”; it has been suggested that he may have had a cyclothymic personality, linked with manic-depressive tendencies, which could explain not only his depression but also other aspects of his behaviour, including his spells of hectic creativity. Mozart, Symphony No. 39 in E-flat Major, K 543Mozart's Symphony No. 39 in E-flat Major, K 543; from a 1936 recording by the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham. This concert, which took place in Ludwigshafen, Ger., was the occasion of the first tape recording of an orchestra.Courtesy of Shirley, Lady Beecham Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus: Symphony No. 41 in C Major, K 551 (Jupiter)Excerpt from the first movement, “Allegro vivace,” of Mozart's Symphony No. 41 in C Major, K 551 (Jupiter); from a 1953 recording by the Dresden Staatskapelle conducted by Franz Konwitschny.© Cefidom/Encyclopædia Universalis During the time of this depression Mozart was working on a series of three symphonies, in E-flat Major (K 543), G Minor (K 550), and C Major (the Jupiter, K 551), usually numbered 39, 40, and 41; these, with the work written for Prague (K 504), represent the summa of his orchestral output. It is not known why they were composed; possibly Mozart had a summer concert season in mind. The Prague work was a climax to his long series of brilliant D Major orchestral pieces, but the closely worked, even motivic form gives it a new power and unity, adding particular force to its frequently dark tone. The E-flat Major work, scored with clarinets and more lyrical in temper, makes fewer departures, except in the intensity of its slow movement, where Mozart used a new palette of darker orchestral colours, and the epigrammatic wit of its finale. In the G Minor work the tone of passion and perhaps of pathos, in its constant falling figures, is still more pronounced. The Jupiter(the name dates from the early 19th century) summarized the series of C Major symphonies, with their atmosphere of military pomp and ceremony, but it went far beyond them in its assimilation of opera buffa style, profundity of expression (in its andante), and richness of working—especially in the finale, which incorporates fugal procedures and ends with a grand apotheosis in five-voice fugal counterpoint. Early in 1789 Mozart accepted an invitation to travel to Berlin with Prince Karl Lichnowsky; they paused in Prague, Dresden(where he played at court), and Leipzig (where he improvised on the Thomaskirche organ). He appeared at the Prussian court and probably was invited to compose piano sonatas for the princess and string quartets with a prominent cello part for King Friedrich Wilhelm II. He did in fact write three quartets, in parts of which he allowed the individual instruments (including the royal cello) special prominence, and there is one sonata (his last, K 576) that may have been intended for the Prussian princess. But it is unlikely that Mozart ever sent this music or was paid for it. Mozart, W.A.: Così fan tutteThe recitativo “Sorella, cosa dici?” (“Sister, what do you say?”), from Act II, scene 1, of Mozart's Così fan tutte (1790); from a 1990 recording featuring the Capella Istropolitana and the Slovak Philharmonic Chorus, conducted by Johannes Wildner and featuring Joanna Borowska as Fiordiligi and Rohangiz Yachmi as Dorabella.Courtesy of Naxos of America, Inc. Mozart, W.A.: Così fan tutteThe aria “Donne mie la fate a tanti a tanti” (“Dear ladies, you treat so many thus”), from Act II, scene 2, of Mozart's Così fan tutte; from a 1990 recording featuring the Capella Istropolitana and the Slovak Philharmonic Chorus, conducted by Johannes Wildner and featuring Andrea Martin as Guglielmo.Courtesy of Naxos of America, Inc. The summer saw the composition of the clarinet quintet, in which a true chamber style is warmly and gracefully reconciledwith the solo writing. Thereafter Mozart concentrated on completing his next opera commission, the third of his Da Ponte operas, Così fan tutte, which was given on January 26, 1790; its run was interrupted after five performances when theatres closed because of the death of Joseph II, but a further five were given in the summer. This opera, the subtlest, most consistent, and most symmetrical of the three, was long reviled (from Beethoven onward) on account of its subject, female fickleness; but a more careful reading of it, especially in light of the emotional texture of the music, which gains complexity as the plot progresses, makes it clear that it is no frivolous piece but a penetrating essay on human feelings and their mature recognition. The music of Act 1 is essentially conventional in expression, and conventional feeling is tellingly parodied in certain of the arias; but the arias of Act 2 are on a deeper and more personal level. Features of the music of Così fan tutte—serenity, restraint, poise, irony—may be noted as markers of Mozart’s late style, which had developed since 1787 and may be linked with his personal development and the circumstances of his life, including his Masonic associations, his professional and financial situation, and his marriage. The year 1790 was difficult and unproductive: besides Così fan tutte, Mozart completed two of the “Prussian” quartets, arranged works by Handel for performance at van Swieten’s house (he had similarly arranged Messiah in 1789), and wrote the first of his two fantasy-like pieces, in a variety of prelude-and-fugue form, for a mechanical organ (this imposing work, in F Minor [K 594], is now generally played on a normal organ). In the autumn, anxious to be noticed in court circles, he went to Frankfurt for the imperial coronation of Leopold II, but as an individual rather than a court musician. His concert, which included two piano concertos and possibly one of the new symphonies, was ill timed, poorly attended, and a financial failure. Anxieties about money were a recurrent theme in his letters home. The Last Year But 1791 promised to be a better year. Music was flowing again: for a concert in March Mozart completed a piano concerto (K 595) begun some years before, reeled off numerous dances for the Redoutensaal, and wrote two new string quintets, the one in D (K 593) being a work of particular refinement and subtlety. In April he applied successfully for the role of unpaid assistant to the elderly Kapellmeister of St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Leopold Hofmann (with the expectation of being duly appointed his successor, but Hofmann was to live until 1793). Mozart, Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute)Queen of the Night's aria “Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen” in Act II of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), K 620; from a 1950 recording featuring soprano Wilma Lipp and the Vienna State Opera Orchestra conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler.© Cefidom/Encyclopædia Universalis An old friend of Mozart’s, Emanuel Schikaneder, had in 1789 set up a company to perform singspiels in a suburban theatre, and in 1791 he engaged Mozart to compose a score to his Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute); Mozart worked on it during the spring and early summer. Then he received another commission, anonymously delivered, for a requiem, to be composed under conditions of secrecy. In addition he was invited, probably in July, to write the opera to be given during Leopold II’s coronation festivities in September. Constanze was away taking a cure at Baden during much of the summer and autumn; in July she gave birth to their sixth child, one of the two to survive (Carl Thomas, 1784–1858, and Franz Xaver Wolfgang, 1791–1844, a composer and pianist). Mozart’s letters to her show that he worked first on Die Zauberflöte, although he must have written some of the Prague opera, La clemenza di Tito (“The Clemency of Titus”), before he left for the Bohemian capital near the end of August. Pressure of work, however, was such that he took with him to Prague, along with Constanze, his pupil Franz Xaver Süssmayr, who almost certainly composed the plain recitatives for the new opera. The work itself, to an old libretto by Pietro Metastasio, condensed and supplemented by the Dresden court poet Caterino Mazzolà, was long dismissed as a product of haste and a commission unwillingly undertaken; but in fact the spare scoring, the short arias, and the generally restrained style are better understood in terms of Mozart’s reaction to the neoclassical thinking of the time and the known preferences of Leopold II. The opera was indifferently received by the court but quickly won over the Prague audiences and went on to become one of Mozart’s most admired works over the ensuing decades. Mozart, Concerto for Clarinet in A Major, K 622Second movement, “Adagio,” of Mozart's Concerto for Clarinet in A Major, K 622; from a 1953 recording featuring clarinetist Leopold Wlach and the Vienna State Opera Orchestra conducted by Artur Rodzinski.© Cefidom/Encyclopædia Universalis Mozart was back in Vienna by the middle of September; his clarinet concerto was finished by September 29, and the next day Die Zauberflöte had its premiere. Again, early reactions were cautious, but soon the opera became the most loved of all of Mozart’s works for the stage. Schikaneder took its plot from a collection of fairy tales by Christoph Martin Wieland but drew too on other literary sources and on current thinking about Freemasonry—all viewed in the context of Viennese popular theatre. Musically it is distinguished from contemporary singspiels not merely by the quality of its music but also by the serious ideas that lie below what may seem to be merely childish pantomime or low comedy, welding together the stylistically diverse elements. Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus: Requiem in D Minor, K 626“Dies Irae” from Mozart's Requiem in D Minor, K 626; from a 1953 recording by the Chamber Chorus of the Vienna Academy of Music conducted by Hermann Scherchen.© Cefidom/Encyclopædia Universalis Mozart had been ill during the weeks in Prague, but to judge by his letters to Constanze in October he was in good spirits and, with some cause, more optimistic about the future. He wrote a Masonic cantata for his lodge and directed a performance of it on November 18. He was also working steadily on the commissioned requiem. Later in November he was ill and confined to bed; some apparent improvement on December 3 was not sustained, and on December 5 he died. “Severe miliary fever” was the certified cause; later, “rheumatic inflammatory fever” was named. Other diagnoses, taking account of Mozart’s medical history, have been put forward, including Schönlein–Henoch syndrome. There is no evidence to support the tale that he was poisoned by Salieri (a colleague and friend, hardly a real rival) or anyone else. He was buried in a multiple grave, standard at the time in Vienna for a person of his social and financial situation; a small group of friends attended the funeral. Constanze Mozart was anxious to have the requiem completed, as a fee was due; it had been commissioned, in memory of his wife, by Count von Walsegg-Stuppach to pass off as his own. She handed it first to Joseph Eybler, who supplied some orchestration but was reluctant to do more, and then to Süssmayr, who produced a complete version, writing several movements himself though possibly basing them on Mozart’s sketches or instructions. Subject to criticism for its egregioustechnical and expressive weaknesses (particularly glaring in the “Sanctus/Benedictus”), this has nevertheless remained the standard version of the work, if only because of its familiarity. The sombre grandeur of the work, with its restrained instrumental colouring and its noble choral writing, hints at what might have been had Mozart lived to take on the Kapellmeistership of St. Stephen’s. Mozart’s Place At the time of his death Mozart was widely regarded not only as the greatest composer of the time but also as a bold and “difficult” one; Don Giovanni especially was seen as complex and dissonant, and his chamber music as calling for outstanding skill in its interpreters. His surviving manuscripts, which included many unpublished works, were mostly sold by Constanze to the firm of André in Offenbach, which issued editions during the 19th century. But Mozart’s reputation was such that even before the end of the 18th century two firms had embarked on substantial collected editions of his music. Important biographies appeared in 1798 and 1828, the latter by Constanze’s second husband; the first scholarly biography, by Otto Jahn, was issued on Mozart’s centenary in 1856. The first edition of the Köchel catalog followed six years later, and the first complete edition of his music began in 1877. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.© Photos.com/Jupiterimages The works most secure in the repertory during the 19th century were the three operas least susceptible to changes in public taste—Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Die Zauberflöte—and the orchestral works closest in spirit to the Romantic era—the minor-key piano concertos (Beethoven wrote a set of cadenzas for the one in D Minor) and the last three symphonies. It was only in the 20th century that Mozart’s music began to be reexamined more broadly. Although up to the middle of the century Mozart was still widely regarded as having been surpassed in most respects by Beethoven, with the increased historical perspective of the later 20th century he came to be seen as an artist of a formidable, indeed perhaps unequaled, expressive range. The traditional image of the child prodigy turned refined drawing-room composer, who could miraculously conceive an entire work in his head before setting pen to paper (always a distortion of the truth), gave way to the image of the serious and painstaking creative artist with acutehuman insight, whose complex psychology demanded exploration by writers, historians, and scholars. The 1980 play Amadeus (written by Peter Shaffer) and especially its film version of 1984 (directed by Miloš Forman), although they did much to promote interest in Mozart, reinforced certain myths—i.e., that even as an adult Mozart remained an inappropriately childish vessel for divinely inspired music and that his premature death was brought about by Salieri. Yet even in this indulgent appropriation of Mozart’s legacy, his full-blooded humanity at times emerges with haunting vividness. Stanley SadieThe Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wolfgang-Amadeus-Mozart

It is destroying 'liberal' education in America today. From whence any possible solution will come, I cannot deduce.

YUM

I should elaborate that I agree completely with your accurate condemnation of the many PC movements about for many years now to deny factual history. "Political correctness" as a thing for its own sake makes me wretch.

Obviously not. They are transfixed to see how it was back then, but immensely relieved that times have moved on.

Thank you. My 25-and-under acquaintances who know this work find it an aesthetically polished, yet abhorrent, thing. Like an accurate but 'fond' black reminiscence of Jim Crow.

A Royal tribute from one Queen to another: The Welsh Guards pay tribute to Aretha Franklin A FITTING tribute to the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, has been made by the Queen of England, as Buckingham Palace’s Changing of the Guard ceremony marked the funeral of the singing sensation on Friday morning. https://www.express.co.uk/news/royal/1011560/aretha-franklin

You know my perversions enough to know that, if I had either, on such a holiday I would be drinking beer with my puppies and playing with my sister.