Susanna's comments (member since Apr 24, 2008)

Susanna's comments from the History is Not Boring group.

Right you are!

A person:

1. Shoe polish.
2. Claimed to have a photographic memory.
3. Clerk at a law office.
4. Freelance legal reporter.

Harold Godwinson.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan - playwright, poet, and Member of Parliament. Buried in "Poet's Corner."

Edward Elgar - composer of Pomp and Circumstance.

Why do I hear the music from Psycho?

Uriah Grant - Jamaican boxer.

And what Churchill said about both the Conservative and Liberal parties, now that you mention it.

Albert Gunther - German-born British zoologist.

Rosa Parks - took the back seat for no one.

We're roasting ours as usual.

A local fire department did a great demonstration for a local news station on what not to do when deep frying a turkey.

Well, they already purged it of moderates like Arlen Spector.

MP - Military Police?

Speaking of Mark Sanford - looks like we're gearing up for a proper 3-ring circus to start 2010 down here.

Embarrassment - the gift that keeps on giving, if Gov. Sanford has anything to say about it.

I think I once went to a performance of it that was a collaboration of the local symphony orchestra and the Civil War reenactors.

Explanations (where necessary):

1. Ukranian.
2. Trained as a civil servant.
3. First post at the Ministry of Justice.
4. Reportedly homosexual.
5. Jilted by Desiree, for a baritone. (Was engaged to Desiree Artot, a Belgian soprano, who without notice married Spanish baritone Mariano Padilla y Ramos in 1869. After he dedicated a piano piece to her.)
6. Ill-starred marriage to Antonina, followed by a little rest cure in Switzerland. (He married a former student, Antonina Miliukova, in 1877, and it was a disaster. After they broke up, but while she refused to divorce him and before she started stalking him, he went to a sanitarium in Clarens, Switzerland.)
7. A premiere hissed in Vienna. (His Violin Concerto.)
8. Violin concerto once described as full of vodka. (Same concerto.)
9. Works compared by critics to Dostoyevsky. (What can I say but that period Russian music critics were kinda weird?)
10. Sudden death at 53 usually ascribed to either cholera or suicide.
11. Patronized by a woman he never met, but with whom he exchanged over a thousand letters. (Nadezhda von Meck.)
12. Her son later married his niece.
13. Described one of his best-known works as loud and probably without much artistic merit, and said that he wasn't tremendously fond of it. (1812 Overture. Description from letter to Nadezhda von Meck.)
14. A favorite of Tsar Alexander III, who gave him the Order of St. Vladimir (fourth class).
15. Conducted at the opening of Carnegie Hall. (Conducted 1812 Overture at 1891 opening.)
16. Honorary Doctor of Music from Cambridge. (In 1893, the year of his death.)
17. His operas were command performances for Alexander III, making his reputation in Russia. (Particularly Eugene Onegin.)
18. Died, pathetically, nine days after the premiere of his Sixth Symphony. Audience was stunned and silent at the first performance; the second was a memorial and had a better reception. (The Symphony Pathetique.)
19. One of his ballets is very popular this time of year. (The Nutcracker Suite keeps some ballet companies going every year.)
20. Ballets also popular with figure skaters like Oksana Baiul. (Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Nutcracker Suite, and selections from the symphonies are all popular with figure skaters.)

Yes, it was Tchaikovsky! Gold star for Barbarossa!

I was going to accuse the membership of being nekulturny.

The plans for the premiere included live cannon, but they ended up not using it, as the assassination of Alexander II rather put a squash on things.

Your go, Barbarossa!

Did who use canon as percussion?

Howard Carter - discoverer of Tut's tomb.

And folks, I am running out of clues. This one really is not as hard as it looks! 18 and 19 in particular should be telling you something.