Site Meter

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Lager

Beckett fact no. 20.

I mentioned the poem 'Dortmunder' in my last post. Dortmunder's a beer, and here's a bottle of it.









In Molloy the hero consumes a bottle of Wallenstein lager when Gaber drops in on him, then worries about Father Ambrose smelling it on his breath and using it as an excuse to palm him off with an unconsecrated communion wafer.

There's no such lager as Wallenstein, but there is a play called Wallensteins Lager by Schiller. Coleridge translated it, and Verdi partly based La Forza del Destino on it. Though Beckett himself hated opera, as he tells us at the end of Proust.

Cheers.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ahem:

The basic plot of "Forza" is based on the novel "Don Alvaro, o la Fuerza del Sino" by the Spanish nobleman and author Don Angel Saavedra, the Duke of Rivas. Only one scene - the scene in the army camp in Act III - is derived from Schiller's "Wallenstein's Lager". (His work also provided the basis for the libretti of Verdi's "Giovanna d'Arco", "I Masnadieri", "Luisa Miller", and "Don Carlos".)

puthwuth said...

Ahem:

Amended. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Actually, here's no such play as Wallensteins Lager. The play is called Wallensteins Tod and Wallensteins Lager ("Wallenstein's camp") is the first (and by far the shortest)of the three parts.