#hodgeposting

[tins-of-mystery]

RIP George Hodgson you would’ve loved the DJ button on secondary school keyboards

[stoportotouch]

hi copper! i consider you as both a hodgeposting + opera/classical music expert, so i was wondering: who do you think is george’s favourite composer and/or opera, and why?

ooh excellent question actually! i am. slightly tempted to say one of the scott adaptations just because. you know. (irving's dad was scott's childhood friend.) buuuuut that's kind of an easy answer tbh so i will Not go with it.

i feel like based on his personality in the book and the show he probably has kind of a soft spot for mozart though. and he probably identifies in a really uncomfortable way with Tamino My Dear Friend Tamino (the tenor from the magic flute)... but also with pamina (said tenor's love interest).

seeing that show hodgson is a bit fancier than his book counterpart those two meet Quite Nicely in the middle with mozart. who was capable of being lowbrow when he wanted to but also he did like a theme. (partly because book hodgson likes music hall music, which was generally quite bawdy.)

however. the opera ernani premiered in england very shortly before the expedition departed. and i am sure that i have shared my theory before that this was the last opera that both hodgson and little saw before they left (although they didn't yet know each other). and while little left thinking "well that was fucking silly wasn't it?" (only to realise later), uh, hodgson did not and instead was followed around by a sense of malaise and anxiety for weeks.

this is of course partly because he went to ernani very shortly after he got ghosted by irving, also its own thing. he probably therefore felt very :( about silva's aria where he's going on about how he wishes that his heart was frozen and he didn't have feelings because seeing his fiancée (who does NOT like him, i would point out) being catfought over by two men (!) is that upsetting for him. and he was very much Not casual about irving in spite of generally being like "no even if i am screwing the same person regularly it is never Uncasual".

howm ever. as well as the usual Bel Canto Sex Bullshit, central to ernani is a story about a guy who gives his Detested Rival a hunting horn that, if the rival blows into it, ernani will immediately drop everything and kill himself. and then he marries the woman that the Detested Rival is in love with, and so The Horn Is Blown. little doesn't realise for A Good While but hodgson is trans and a victorian enough to be familiar with figuratively carving bits off himself to see the end of the opera and go "hm. yep." and go home and cry for an evening.

(on a cheerier note, however, he does think that the leading lady is just like. conceptually hot. and how could he not when she goes about threatening men with a dagger like "if you don't behave. it's the Phallic Blade for you. don't test me!")