conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a plot for a book about Lassparri, Driftwood, Rosa entitled A Night at the Opera.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A Night at the Opera (film): Otis Driftwood (Groucho), business manager for wealthy dowager mrs Claypool (Margaret Dumont), has stood her up and is having dinner with another woman in the very same restaurant.\nWhen she discovers him seated directly behind her, Driftwood joins mrs Claypool, and introduces her to Herman Gottlieb (Sig Ruman), director of the New York Opera Company, also dining at the restaurant.\nDriftwood has arranged for mrs Claypool to invest $200,000 in the opera company, allowing Gottlieb to engage Rodolfo Lassparri (Walter Woolf King), the "greatest tenor since Caruso".\nBackstage at the opera house, chorister Ricardo Baroni (Allan Jones) hires his best friend Fiorello (Chico) to be his manager.\nRicardo is in love with the soprano, Rosa Castaldi (Kitty Carlisle), who is also being courted by Lassparri.\nDriftwood arrives and finds Lassparri attacking Tomasso (Harpo), who knocks Lassparri unconscious by hitting him over the head with a mallet.\nFiorello appears and identifies himself as the manager of the "greatest tenor in the world".\nDriftwood, mistakenly thinking Fiorello is referring to Lassparri, signs Baroni to a contract.\nAfter bidding farewell to Rosa at the pier, Ricardo, Fiorello and Tomasso stowaway on board the ocean liner to New York inside Driftwood\'s trunk.\nAfter Driftwood discovers them, he tries to get the three of them to leave, as he is expecting a rendezvous with mrs Claypool.\nThey refuse to go until they\'ve eaten and eventually, Driftwood\'s incredibly small stateroom is crowded with an assortment of people.\n(see Stateroom scene below) Lassparri later spots the stowaways among the immigrants on the ship and they are caught and thrown into the brig.\nThey escape with help from Driftwood and are able to sneak into the country by assuming the identities of three famous bearded aviators, who are traveling aboard the ship.\nAfter a welcoming reception in New York their true identities are discovered and they hide out in Driftwood\'s hotel room, pursued by police sergeant Henderson (Robert Emmett O\'Connor).\nMeanwhile, Ricardo is reunited with Rosa after climbing in the window of her hotel room.\nRicardo has an altercation with Lassparri, which results in both Rosa and Driftwood being fired from the opera company by Gottlieb.\nThe boys decide to seek revenge by sabotaging the opening night performance of Il trovatore ending with the abduction of Lassparri, forcing Gottlieb to substitute Ricardo and Rosa in his place.\nThe audience clearly prefers Baroni over Lassparri and the latter is booed and pelted with fruit after he attempts to return to the stage.\nThe film ends with Driftwood and Fiorello attempting to negotiate another contract, as Rosa and Ricardo sing an encore.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A Night at the Opera
  As well as a personal view of the score the conductor must have a will of iron to impose his wishes on maybe eighty sometimes uncooperative musicians within a fixed time limit: he must have an ear so he can spot which fiddle of sixteen played a wrong note: he must have an eye so that when he stops the orchestra and says 'From the top please' his gaze leaves Zerkin McTurkin who played the wrong note in absolutely no doubt that it was he who caused the stoppage: and he must be naturally speed-conscious so that he finds exactly the right tempo and pulse for each piece. This last is often what sorts out the conductor's range – Mozart, for instance, can be destroyed by being taken too fast (Karajan often, sometimes Solti), also the meaning of his music can be changed by taking it too slow (Böhm, much too slow but often worth it because it allows each phrase to bud, break and flower before your very ears in a way you will hear from no other conductor), whereas Davis and Haitink judge Mozartian tempi to perfection. This applies less critically to other composers, Wagner alone being a great survivor when played at any speed.
  Most of the above is equally applicable to concert-hall conductors but the man in the pit has to cope with singers as well. It is a huge advantage if the conductor has been a singer himself, but there are very few who have known the sweating palms and dry throat on stage before the first entry, and the always present nightmare of a lapse of memory. The musical director has to try to persuade the singers to do it his way. Sometimes they won't. They have been singing it their way for seventeen years, only came in on Tuesday and have to sing it in Los Angeles again next week. The maestro has to lump it. He does what he can.
  But the opera conductor's most important job is to keep the stage in kilter with the pit, to have the orchestra and singers come in on cue. Some do this in a sing-along fashion, mouthing the words as if they were in the prompt box. Some do it deadpan with little wheedling movements of the fingers. Most do it with the eyes, the conductor's most telling weapon.
  It is rare for conductors to be equally good over the German and Italian repertory (e.g. Varviso mainly Latin, Haitink only Nordic). Some manage it (Karajan, Abbado), others excel in a narrow field (Davis – Mozart and Berlioz). Every one has his on day and his off day. Solti used sometimes to drive too hard. Klemperer would take a nap from time to time.
  Orchestras can be as temperamental as singers. They are all sophisticates and most are cynics. Dark messages come up from the pit during rehearsal – 'It's not working out with Pitzmeister: they're not going to give him the overtime he wants.' Only the greatest gain their respect, and not always those.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A Night at the Opera
  As well as a personal view of the score the conductor must have a will of iron to impose his wishes on maybe eighty sometimes uncooperative musicians within a fixed time limit: he must have an ear so he can spot which fiddle of sixteen played a wrong note: he must have an eye so that when he stops the orchestra and says 'From the top please' his gaze leaves Zerkin McTurkin who played the wrong note in absolutely no doubt that it was he who caused the stoppage: and he must be naturally speed-conscious so that he finds exactly the right tempo and pulse for each piece. This last is often what sorts out the conductor's range – Mozart, for instance, can be destroyed by being taken too fast (Karajan often, sometimes Solti), also the meaning of his music can be changed by taking it too slow (Böhm, much too slow but often worth it because it allows each phrase to bud, break and flower before your very ears in a way you will hear from no other conductor), whereas Davis and Haitink judge Mozartian tempi to perfection. This applies less critically to other composers, Wagner alone being a great survivor when played at any speed.
  Most of the above is equally applicable to concert-hall conductors but the man in the pit has to cope with singers as well. It is a huge advantage if the conductor has been a singer himself, but there are very few who have known the sweating palms and dry throat on stage before the first entry, and the always present nightmare of a lapse of memory. The musical director has to try to persuade the singers to do it his way. Sometimes they won't. They have been singing it their way for seventeen years, only came in on Tuesday and have to sing it in Los Angeles again next week. The maestro has to lump it. He does what he can.
  But the opera conductor's most important job is to keep the stage in kilter with the pit, to have the orchestra and singers come in on cue. Some do this in a sing-along fashion, mouthing the words as if they were in the prompt box. Some do it deadpan with little wheedling movements of the fingers. Most do it with the eyes, the conductor's most telling weapon.
  It is rare for conductors to be equally good over the German and Italian repertory (e.g. Varviso mainly Latin, Haitink only Nordic). Some manage it (Karajan, Abbado), others excel in a narrow field (Davis – Mozart and Berlioz). Every one has his on day and his off day. Solti used sometimes to drive too hard. Klemperer would take a nap from time to time.
  Orchestras can be as temperamental as singers. They are all sophisticates and most are cynics. Dark messages come up from the pit during rehearsal – 'It's not working out with Pitzmeister: they're not going to give him the overtime he wants.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me three more paragraphs.. End with the sentence ' This led to Handel's house being closed down.'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: COMMENT Gounod could write a rousing tune, Gounod was a crafty man of the theatre, Gounod could orchestrate, Gounod could wring the sentimental tear. On this level Gounod is just fine. What Gounod cannot do is to treat the human condition in any depth. His characters give off the vibes of operetta as they sing the music of grand opera. His plots are built around scenes which come off OK but which together don't add up. If you don't ask too much of Gounod and have a taste for musical milk chocolate he will give you a good evening.
  For some reason Gounod was (surprisingly) friendly with Wagner who saw him as something of a missionary figure trying to restore beauty, truth and artistic integrity to the French stage. This can only be a comment on Wagner's judgement or on the very low level of truth, beauty, etc. in Parisian musical life, for Gounod was the opposite of a reformer. He presented pleasantly packaged songs and scenes from operatic life which have given a lot of pleasure to a lot of people, and what is wrong with that?
  LIFE AND TIMES Opera in Handel's time was still pretty well always funded by royals. The court composer had to be something of a household politico and Handel wasn't very good at that, being fired from Hanover for taking the wrong line on EU policy. But his true value was known and he got a safe job in London where he was soon made Director of the Royal Academy of Music. In what was a rather more commercial climate Handel's job was to put on the operas, many of them his own, mainly at the King's Theatre, Haymarket. This he did for over 20 years under various sponsors. He had his flops, he had his sell-outs and he got into an operatic contest with a rival opera-monger, one Bononcini. For lack of an alternative interest such as football pools, the citizens became supporters of one or other of the rival operatic teams, leading to a high degree of disorder and operatic hooliganism including an on-stage no-holds-barred fight between two rival sopranos. This led to Handel's house being closed down.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last three paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: GAYNOR JOHNSON for being probably the best typist in the world and for her quite outstanding flair in deciphering what is probably the worst handwriting in the world.
  STANLEY SADIE for everything from lending me his scores to answering, as the great Cham of music, questions to which no one else had an answer.
  CAROLINE SPEED for her help and enthusiasm until she was taken away from me to produce the 'Young Musician of the Year'.