Thursday, December 22, 2005

Barely funny even to me

Maybe I'll call her Anna Ne-Ochen'-Trebko. There is a .00005% chance that will make you laugh if you speak any Russian. I'm not even sure it would make sense to a native speaker. Morphology humor. Good times.

Current Sountrack: Salome (1947) Cebotari, Rothmuller, Hongen, Patzak, C. Krauss dir.

6 comments:

Princess Alpenrose said...

I can't find trebovat' but i feel like I know what it means. You got a root vegetable, er, linguistic root for me?

[Jeezus, my dictionaries are buried somewhere in one of these horrid post-move boxes. Looks like I'm going to have to install cyrillic on my keyboard, and we'll be cutting & pasting into blogger for years! (Won't that be fun?)]

Oh, k'stati, how about:
"Anna Nemnogo-Trebko."?

Maury D'annato said...

See, trebko doesn't really mean anything, adding to the not funny of it. The root, yes, can mean "need" but trebko is I think meaningless. It's just the ne on there makes me want to futz with the name. Anna Netrebko. Anna na-oborot Dovol'no Trebko.

Princess Alpenrose said...

Maybe if we feminize it, "trebka" could be "needy"? Or maybe naoborot, "netrebka" means unnecessary, that we don't need her? ha ha

But I do really understand what you mean about the 'ne' begging for futzing around with. [she says, ending a sentence with a preoposition...]

Speaking of AN, though, did you see the "interview" with her in the Nespresso (espresso system) coffee magazine? [I use a Nespresso machine (with delivery of various types of custom espresso pods).] A very vomitrocious interview in my opinon.

Interyesno, could you make me a list of "Gergiev's Girls"? (with patronymics would be even funnerer...)

Grrg said...

What what what!? Espresso machine magazine!? You must transcribe for us!

Maury D'annato said...

Ariadne: I lost track of this thread. I'm not sure who "Gergiev's Girls" were meant to be!
It's interesting you mention patronymics, because back in 1995 at my unofficial Met debut (I had tickets for a Voigt Walkuere but couldn't resist getting standing room for Onegin) I went backstage to have the pre-unbelievable-vocal-decline Gorchakova sign my program. And I wanted to address her politely but didn't know her patronymic. These days, I think young, hip, modern Russians don't use them anyway.
So anyway in the case that they are used, I don't know (other than posting on opera-l) how one goes about finding them out, since to Americans it's sort of a weird middle name thing so no interviewer would mention it, par example.

Princess Alpenrose said...

Oh, that makes sense - I wasn't aware that patronymics are not in use so much now.

& sorry that random request about Gergiev's Girls. It seems to me that a whole generation of opera singers from "over there" have studied with Gergiev (& his sister), he's sort of their svengali or mentor or whatever.

Any number of them refer to him, usually *but not always!!!!* in glowing reverential he walks on water type of terms, like La Netrudno herself does in that coffee magazine article. That's why I call them "Gergiev's Girls" in my mind.

[I suppose I could type it up (or scan it) that article for you, Greg. It is really sappily and fawningly awful!]

So I was wondering if anyone knows all the famous Divas who have studied with Gergiev, who consider him their Mentor?

ps might as well put La Fleming in the group (per her book)...