I was very interested in seeing another Weimar-era operetta, so I was glad to see this come up on Operavision (although, alas but inevitably, it's not a new recording; it's from back in 2016). Straus was originally Strauss, but he wanted to be seen as distinct from Johann & Co, so he got rid of the last S, even though he was writing in a similar idiom.
I got into it with a fucking nazi on the youtube page. I know that that's generally unadvisable, but it actually worked out well in this case; I'm pretty sure I left him absolutely seething, which is the most you can hope for in such a situation. The highlight was him seizing on my last name, leaping to the conclusion that I was Jewish, and referring to my "breed" and whatnot--and also repeatedly calling me "Moses," presumably because it accentuates my putative Judaism. You'd think the sort of person obsessed with International Jewry would know enough to know that "Moses" is not a characteristically Jewish surname, is what I'd say if I had any respect for the intelligence or discernment of fucking nazis. Family lore sez that back in the thirties or thereabouts, my grandfather got turned away from a fishing resort because they assumed likewise. Fun. Anyway, he ultimately did an inept flounce and then ruined whatever rhetorical weight that would have had by commenting again. This is SUCH an obvious thing: I don't think the Internet Flounce is particularly effective in any event, but if you're going to do it, you have to absolutely COMMIT to it. Otherwise, everyone can see that your lofty claims to not care and to be so over it are bullshit. Also, I think--I don't know this, but I think it, and I want to believe it, because it's hilarious--he went through what I laughingly call my youtube channel and downvoted all the videos. I mean, why else do they all suddenly have exactly one downvote each? That rules. I'm not mad! YOU'RE mad!
Anyway, you can't read our exchange on the page, because it's been taken down: I was going to give youtube credit for this--I DID report his initial comment as hate speech--but I suspect Operavision itself gets the credit. They also deleted another exchange he was having with another fucking nazi. I missed that one, but I thought there was at least a chance of this happening, so what do you know, I screencapped the one I was involved with:
It is interesting that this guy never actually refers to Jews or Judaism by name. I mean, when you write "we all know well who were behind the devaluing of human morals and values in Germany prior to 1933," you're not exactly holding your cards close to your chest--and yet, for some reason he doesn't feel comfortable coming out and just saying it. I mean, yes, nazis should feel instinctive shame about being such worthless degenerates, but do you really think that's what's going on here? That they're actually capable of shame? Maybe social pressure can act on people even when they're not consciously aware of it. I don't know.
Why are there so many goddamn fucking nazis appearing in the comments of classical music videos? Well, that's a difference between American and European nazis: the American ones are generally proud of being crude and uncultured, but a lot of the Europeans have this conception of what they perceive as high art as one of the main cultural outputs of white people that they're trying to save. And so, alas, some number of them legitimately enjoy the same things I do. Well, bad people liking the same art that you do is something that happens sometimes, alas. This is also something metal fans have to deal with, though it's harder for them, since a fair few of the musicians themselves are also nazis, crypto- to greater or lesser degrees (sure, Wagner was a horrible person in many ways, but even he was more complicated than that).
You might ask (I'm aware that this alleged "opera review" is mainly about internet nazis; so it goes sometimes), "is it really a good idea to engage with these people?" And the answer of course is hell no, it's never a good idea to do that. Validate their arguments by actually arguing with them? Fuck that shit. But if you substitute "shout insults at" for "engage with," things get a little more complicated, I think. There are some instances--maybe most of them--where even that isn't advisable. Many a liberal or leftist forum has been destroyed when it degenerated into regulars getting mad at right-wing trolls all the time, drowning out more useful conversations. But...well, in that youtube comments section, nobody else was responding to this guy. And it's a nominally apolitical arena. So, while obviously this particular interaction amounted to nothing in itself, I think you could say that people making a habit of not letting white supremacist bullshit like this go unchallenged could have two benefits: first, obviously you're not going to change the nazi's mind--fuck that guy--but it could be beneficial for observers to see that these things don't just go unchallenged. And second, if these people see that they can't just post garbage like this in neutral territory without being shouted down, they might--might!--think in the future, eh, these things are more trouble than they're worth. Maybe. Maybe not. But these questions are important in an age of rising right-wing extremism.
ANYWAY. The operetta itself. I know what you're thinking: "'Gayropean values?' I don't know what that means, but it sounds HOT AS HELL. Why are nazis offended by this operetta, aside from the fact that it's written by (((Oscar Straus)))?" Just how gay ARE these Gayropean values? And the answer is...not that gay, actually. And I'm actually surprised by that, given the tenor of both positive and negative comments on the video. What seems to be happening is that there's been a certain amount of semiotic slippage between "gay" and "camp," and this operetta is very, very campy. Needless to say, it's a complicated thing, and a lot of stereotypically gay stuff is camp, but it's really not the same thing. Sure, there are dancing boys here, but there are also dancing girls, and the actually gayness...less discernible than you might expect. Or so I think.
Anyway, the plot is some nonsense about Cleopatra and her staff and a few suitors, along with a secondary couple. It's sheer goofiness, as I think this screen capture ably demonstrates:
But it's good fun. I think there's a higher ratio of singing-to-spoken-text than there is in a lot of operettas I've seen, which can only be to the good. And the music is...well, pretty darned infectious, as these things go. I liked it a lot more than I did the more famous Die listige Witwe, I'll tell you that much. The singers aren't particularly notable qua singers, but then again, not that much is asked of them. Dagmar Manzel is apparently a cultural fixture in Germany, and she has a lot of fun with the capricious, flirtatious title role.
The only problem here is that, like Spring Storms, the subtitles are plainly inadequate: not as much so as in that one, but we're still clearly missing a fair bit. Dammit, why is this so hard? Oh well. I was still glad to be able to see it. More operetta, please!
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