Alphabet associations - I

[Flay]

From The Barber of Seville:

Berta: Whatever was that noise?
Oh. It must have been the doctor
instructing his pupil again.
These girls now-a-days just don’t
know how to behave!

Loud knocking at the front door

All right. In a minute!
All this snuff will be my undoing. (it would be coke nowadays)

[Flay]

I think everyone is spent after your J. What was the answer to that, by the way?

Janacek 1st SQ - The Kreutzer Sonata (as in crime of passion)
ditto 2nd SQ - Intimate letters
ditto - The Cunning Little Vixen

Sorry to exhaust you

[Nick Armstrong]

Janacek 1st SQ - The Kreutzer Sonata (as in crime of passion)
ditto 2nd SQ - Intimate letters
ditto - The Cunning Little Vixen

Sorry to exhaust you

Not at all - it was the hilarity of the various responses I was thinking of!

[Flay]

I think everyone is spent after your J.

I missed your cast-away comment there, Calibs, too slow off the mark. Put a knot in it.

[Anna]

Is this a private conversation or can anybody join in? I've been away watching the excellent adaptation of Birdsong on BBC1. Perhaps others have too, hence lack of response to rubberknickers' puzzle?
Edit: I must be a bit dim this evening, looking back I see Flay answered it <doh> Time for bed I think!

[Flay]

...looking back I see Flay has strewn clues all over the place as to the answer .... possibly <doh> Time for bed I think!

I might be wrong, Anna. It might not be Knockers (this thread gets worse.. ). We await Rubber's return from his posh nosh.

[Norfolk Born]

Is this a private conversation or can anybody join in? I've been away watching the excellent adaptation of Birdsong on BBC1. Perhaps others have too, hence lack of response to rubberknickers' puzzle?
Edit: I must be a bit dim this evening, looking back I see Flay answered it <doh> Time for bed I think!

I was really looking forward to 'Birdsong' but regretfully must report a considerable sense of disappointment. I'm not sure that I'm that interested in finding out what was wrong with it, so may not watch next week. I'd jump at the chance to shoot that damned pianist - 'Spiegel im Spiegel' again! And I kept thinking that the chap playing our hero is neither as handsome as Toby Stephen (Matthew Crawley in 'Downton Abbey') nor as good an actor. Frankly, any single episode of Blackadder Goes Forth would have been more satisfying.

[rubbernecker]

Hic... Burp... I have returned. I've recorded Birdsong for consumption later, but am disappointed to learn it might not be up to the quality of the akshal novel. Interesting to see that Menotti was flayed, at the hands of the critics rather than Percy Grainger....

I've always had rather a soft spot for The Medium, from which that rather nonsensical synopsis extract above, featuring Madame Baba, is taken. Likewise his Piano Concerto.

As regards the puzzle, it is dear old Mercia who, yet again, displays the glowing buds of promise. I am certain he knows the answer but his characteristic coyness (or else an unwillingness to set L) is preventing him from bursting into full flower.

[Nick Armstrong]

I was really looking forward to 'Birdsong' but regretfully must report a considerable sense of disappointment. I'm not sure that I'm that interested in finding out what was wrong with it, so may not watch next week. I'd jump at the chance to shoot that damned pianist - 'Spiegel im Spiegel' again! And I kept thinking that the chap playing our hero is neither as handsome as Toby Stephen (Matthew Crawley in 'Downton Abbey') nor as good an actor.

the quality of the akshal novel

I'm the only person I know who thought the original novel was vastly overrated. Good idea for a story but such lumpen writing, I found. Something of the 'emperor's new clothes' about it. And the TV adaptation has a lot of the same faults. However I enjoyed the production of the pre-war French scenes and don't think the pulchritude of the leading actor is necessarily a key element unlike Norfy (I saw the actor, Eddie someone, interviewed on Breakfast TV and he's a very intelligent and articulate chap, who talked about seeing his own "rather irritating face" on adverts on the tube etc. I think he did his best with all the static scenes he was asked to cope with in the adaptation).

Not sure what the 'Spiegel im Spiegel' reference is about, Norfs. It was good to hear that gorgeous Fauré Romance sans paroles (written when Fauré was about the age of the hero) in the scene where he mistakes the sisters...

I enjoyed it more than the book, to tell the truth.

[Flay]

another word for stealing .............................

(but I don't want to set a question )

As regards the puzzle, it is dear old Mercia who, yet again, displays the glowing buds of promise. I am certain he knows the answer but his characteristic coyness (or else an unwillingness to set L) is preventing him from bursting into full flower.

So it isn't Knock? Was I wasting my time?

Is that floral reference relevant I wonder?

[mercia]

I'm sure you know a word for stealing/thieving beginning with K, Flay.

[greenilex]

Kleptocracy?

[Anna]

I enjoyed it more than the book, to tell the truth.

I've never read the but I enjoyed it as a drama and want to find out what happens. Unlike Norfy I think Eddie Redmayne is a better actor than Matthew in Downton and far more handsome! Clemence Poesy is also much more beautiful than Lady Mary (if we are discussing success of productions purely on good looks!) I was also very taken with the character Jack Firebrace.
Edit: If the K is kleptomania then Menotti wrote The Old Maid and the Thief ?

[rubbernecker]

If the K is kleptomania then Menotti wrote The Old Maid and the Thief ?

Bravo, Anna

Are you going to go all the way and finish it off?

EDIT: Sorry, that should have been Brava, I think...

[Norfolk Born]

I'm the only person I know who thought the original novel was vastly overrated. Good idea for a story but such lumpen writing, I found. Something of the 'emperor's new clothes' about it. And the TV adaptation has a lot of the same faults. However I enjoyed the production of the pre-war French scenes and don't think the pulchritude of the leading actor is necessarily a key element unlike Norfy (I saw the actor, Eddie someone, interviewed on Breakfast TV and he's a very intelligent and articulate chap, who talked about seeing his own "rather irritating face" on adverts on the tube etc. I think he did his best with all the static scenes he was asked to cope with in the adaptation).

Not sure what the 'Spiegel im Spiegel' reference is about, Norfs. It was good to hear that gorgeous Fauré Romance sans paroles (written when Fauré was about the age of the hero) in the scene where he mistakes the sisters...

I enjoyed it more than the book, to tell the truth.

The irritating 'Moonlight Sonata' like piano theme that was strewn far too liberally (for my liking) throughout the first episode (and which has been used umpteen times in recent TV dramas) is either Arvo Part's 'Spiegel im Spiegel' or a lazy parody of it.

Concerning the hero's looks: I find it difficult to swallow the notion that he had what it took to snare the young lady's affections, however badly her husband - whose character is dismally unidimensional - treats her.

Like most TV dramas, there's just TOO MUCH DAMN MUSIC for my liking (compare the very limited, but telling, use of music in the increasingly absorbing 'Borgen'). I don't need constant musical interruptions to help me guess how I'm supposed to react to a given scene.

I loved the book, by the way, which may partly explain my disappointment in the TV version - but I still think the latter leaves much to be desired.

I did wonder whether they'd blown most of the budget on the trenches - which look pretty authentic as far as I can tell - and then had to cut corners elsewhere. The front and shop floor of the Azaire factory reek of cheap computer graphics.

A final thought: who, and how observant or not, were the people walking in the background while the doomed lovers were doing their best to knock over that tree?