Just for fun, given Judy's claim of being offended by anything less than total historical accuracy... :-)
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <authfriend@...> wrote: > > And with regard to the "Mad Scene" woman emptybill was talking > about, she murders her bridegroom because she's been forced by > her brother to marry him rather than the man she loves, and > she has gone insane with grief. > > Real tricky on the woman's part, huh? > > There's more: Her brother has arranged the marriage for > political reasons, to secure his own power; and the two > thwarted lovers have been led to believe each has betrayed the > other. When the woman's lover learns that she has died, he > kills himself. > > The opera is based on real events that took place in 17th > century Scotland. First, this is inaccurate. The opera is based on Sir Walter Scott's novel "The Bride of Lammermoor." Scott at one point *claimed* that it was based on historical fact, but that seems not to have been true. From Wikipedia: The next five years of Stair's [Sir James Dalrymple's] life were comparatively uneventful, but in 1669 a family calamity, the exact facts of which will probably never be ascertained, overtook him. His daughter Janet, who had been betrothed to Lord Rutherfurd, was married to Dunbar of Baldoon, and some tragic incident occurred on the wedding night, from the effects of which she never recovered. As the traditions vary on the central fact, whether it was the bride who stabbed her husband, or the husband who stabbed the bride, no credence can be given to the mass of superstitions and spiteful slander <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slander> which surrounded it, principally leveled at Lady Stair. Sir Walter Scott <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Walter_Scott> took the plot of his Bride of Lammermoor <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bride_of_Lammermoor> from this incident, but he disclaimed any intention of making Lord Stair the basis for Sir William Ashton. Second, now that Judy's description of the opera as being based on "real events" has been shown to be... uh...less than factual, can we expect her anytime soon to rag on it? That's what she did for the movie she never bothered to see when she found out that it was less than 100% historically accurate, after all. :-) Will she post a nasty putdown of the opera, claiming that either Sir Walter Scott or Gaetano Donizetti were "Christian bigots" trying to misrepresent true history? Only time will tell... :-) :-) :-)
