Word: seraglio
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Chronically poverty-stricken Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wanted to be married, decided to compose a light little Singspiel to pay the bills, titled it Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio). To make it popular, he set it in a harem. He filled it with "Turkish style" music and costumes which were fashionable in 18th Century Europe, gave the heroine his future wife's name Constanze. After the Vienna premiere in 1782, Emperor Joseph II said: "Too fine for our ears, my dear Mozart-and much too many notes." Despite the imperial reservation, Die Entf...
...Mozart fans who expected another Don Giovanni or Marriage of Figaro, it was a disappointment. The Abduction from the Seraglio is a trifle in which half of the dialogue is spoken, not sung. Its story (supplied by Librettist Gottlieb Stephanie, who borrowed it from a comedy by Dramatist Christoph Bretzner, who probably borrowed it from an English comic opera called The Captive) tells of an English cavalier and his manservant who try to liberate the cavalier's lady love and her maid from a Turkish pasha's harem...
Thirty minutes by subway and bus can easily consummate Miss Bergwall's desires. Park Street, Kenmore station, and the bus to Pilgrim road mark the way to the Simmons seraglio...
...gunpowder ran out the heels of his boots-his favorite hobby. "I have learned not to run up a high temperature and blood pressure," said Speaker Moses, "over the intolerant off-scourings of minds inflamed by revolutionaries . . . the wisecracks of sophisticates who are the eunuchs of our metropolitan seraglio, the lofty disdain of ivory-tower planners, the bitter, irresponsible mouthings of the radical press, the cheese spread of radio commentators and the slipcover advertising of former mayors." The Institute awarded the Commissioner a gold medal: for "distinguished services to humanity...
...would recommend to the Government of the United States," wrote William Eaton, grinding his teeth, "to station a company of comedians and a seraglio before the enemy's port...