I'm working like a Trojan

Although clearly not at writing blog posts. Partly that is because the Seven Years War campaign is not currently happening  - not dead, just sleeping - and also I have been, in a small way, engaged in trying to prove that democracy in this country is likewise merely resting with its eyes closed rather than completely moribund.

Indeed, the only thing that has appeared on here recently is a comment from Iain that 'Arms and the Man' was also set in the Balkans. I haven't seen the play for many years; in fact the more I think about it the more it seems to me that I am confusing it with 'Man and Superman' and that I have probably never seen it at all. Shaw's plays do still get produced these days - I have seen both 'Pygmalion' and 'Saint Joan' in the last couple of years - so let's hope it comes round soon.

There are a couple of tenuous connections (and you know that's the way I like them) between the play and the specific opera concerned (which was 'Idomeneo'), with a second opera as well plus a tiny, tiny bit of wargaming relevance. The phrase 'arms and the man' comes from the opening line of the Aeniad, Virgil's poem in which a member of the Trojan royal family sails off after the fall of the city to follow his fate by indirectly both founding Rome and causing the Punic Wars to take place. In Mozart's opera it is another Trojan, Aeneas' cousin Ilia, daughter of King Priam, who, having been brought back as a captive to Crete by Idomeneo, provides the romantic sub plot and causes Elettra, daughter of Agamemnon,  no end of grief; although as I pointed out previously her family have already done more than enough to tip anyone over the edge.

Kurt Weill wrote an opera called 'Der Kuhhandel'. A literal translation of that is 'cattle trading', but a more idiomatic one might be 'horse trading', e.g. of the kind that politicians are prone to. Anyway, the plot about arms dealing actually does prominently feature a cow. Its original English title was 'A Kingdom for a Cow', which is, of course, a Shakespearean allusion. Opera North performed it some years ago, but changed the title to 'Arms and the Cow', a Shavian reference which rather nicely sums up what the work is all about. At the time I rather annoyed my ex-wife by going on at length about how accurate was its depiction of the world of weapon sales based on my own experiences of the same; but let's face it, if I hadn't been that which irritated her then it would have been something else.

Enough of that, let's have Dido's Lament: