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Mawrdew Czgowchwz
Diva Mawrdew Czgowchwz (pronounced “Mardu Gorgeous”) bursts like the most brilliant of comets onto the international opera scene, only to confront the deadly malice and black magic of her rivals. Outrageous and uproarious, flamboyant and serious as only the most perfect frivolity can be, James McCourt’s entrancing send-up of the world of opera has been a cult classic for more than a quarter-century. This comic tribute to the love of art is a triumph of art and love by a contemporary American master.
233 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1975
16 people are currently reading
1355 people want to read
About the author
James McCourt
18 books25 followersJames McCourt was born in 1941.
McCourt was raised in New York City and educated at Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School and Manhattan College, when it was considered the Irish-American Harvard. McCourt briefly studied acting at the Yale School of Drama, but left with fellow student Vincent Virga in 1964 to go to London, to experience the exploding theater scene there. McCourt and Virga have been a couple ever since then. They stayed in London for two periods, from 1964 to 1967, and 1969 to 1971, resettling in New York City.
After McCourt’s story was published in the New American Review, the legendary writer and social commentator Susan Sontag helped McCourt find a publisher. In 1975, McCourt published the expanded “Mawrdew Czgowchwz” in book form. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in The New York Times called the book “A gloriously flamboyant debut. Take it in spoonfuls and you'll find passages to fall in love with. Sooner or later, you may even find yourself reading them aloud to your friends.”
McCourt was raised in New York City and educated at Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School and Manhattan College, when it was considered the Irish-American Harvard. McCourt briefly studied acting at the Yale School of Drama, but left with fellow student Vincent Virga in 1964 to go to London, to experience the exploding theater scene there. McCourt and Virga have been a couple ever since then. They stayed in London for two periods, from 1964 to 1967, and 1969 to 1971, resettling in New York City.
After McCourt’s story was published in the New American Review, the legendary writer and social commentator Susan Sontag helped McCourt find a publisher. In 1975, McCourt published the expanded “Mawrdew Czgowchwz” in book form. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in The New York Times called the book “A gloriously flamboyant debut. Take it in spoonfuls and you'll find passages to fall in love with. Sooner or later, you may even find yourself reading them aloud to your friends.”
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
July 14, 2021
Idols and idolatry:
The supreme diva is an operatic messiah and the clique of her worshippers serves as apostles and the partisan critics play the role of evangelists and everything is spiced with a pinch of medieval witchcraft.
The text is a thicket of words so one is obliged to fight one’s way through it like a wild beast trough the jungle and narrational technique is a whimsical grotesque and Mawrdew Czgowchwz is a Bacchanalia of a novel.
Idols rise and idols fall and wherever there is a crowd there is an idol…
Mawrdew Czgowchwz was given police escort to the Plaza Hotel while many of the crowd at the airport marched back. Some went barefoot. At the hotel a mob filled the lobby while the singer was further interviewed and photographed by the press.
The supreme diva is an operatic messiah and the clique of her worshippers serves as apostles and the partisan critics play the role of evangelists and everything is spiced with a pinch of medieval witchcraft.
As the pearl is achieved through the stimulus of finely comminuted particles of silicon and is destined to be worn about the soignée necks of some of the better carcasses in town, we take Czgowchwz out of the thrall of time and cultivate a legend.
The text is a thicket of words so one is obliged to fight one’s way through it like a wild beast trough the jungle and narrational technique is a whimsical grotesque and Mawrdew Czgowchwz is a Bacchanalia of a novel.
Idols rise and idols fall and wherever there is a crowd there is an idol…
June 2, 2017
Some rough math tells me it took fourteen days to finish this 204-page book. That's not my normal pace. But I have excuses. Try reading with this guy . . .
. . . pecking away all day at your window. And certain local flightless birds -
- are attempting to retain Lord Stanley's famous silverware. And, and, I'm just too cool to take a book to a baseball game, unlike this dude:
But let me tell you about this book, a novel, kind of, about an opera diva. And notwithstanding the two-week duration of reading, I really enjoyed it. And, and, I'm not really a fan of opera. Oh, I like the odd aria, and I could put Les pêcheurs de perles on repeat and listen to it all day long. But the comedic makeup and costuming, the overwrought plots, the kind of sing-talk in between the actual songs, has never worked for me. And, and, and, I prefer the male voices. But none of that is necessary. Indeed, there's a playlist of one of Czgowchwz' concerts, 30 songs; and I fired up the youtube . . . but I didn't get past the first number.
There's gorgeous* writing though: new, melodic, challenging, pyrotechnic. Sometimes it was this simple, yet capturing: The forties ended, and they did not.
Here's a fuller example, a scene where the diva has had a breakdown of sorts and Zwischen, a kind of psychiatrist, comes to examine her:
Zwischen arrived upon the jostling scene moments after everyone else, protesting: this was not one of his regular consultation days. Dame Sybil, huffed, outraged at this footling nicety: "Sod your bleeding regular consultation days, you mucky formalist Hun quack!" Zwischen gasped in umlauts, cowering backward up the grand staircase to the Czgowchwz sickroom. Sloshing neat tequila into a handy snifter, Dame Sybil fumed: "Officious little bugger!" Swallowing gulps of firewater, she loped into the music room "to play the shit out of something demonic by Scriabin" to achieve release (Vers la flamme, op. 72).
It's odd how reading years go. I'm supposed to be reading Henry James but then started reading various Irish novelists and a book of Irish folklore, sort of. And so, it became a year of reading Irish. This book would seem to be a break from that, but the reading gods do not like to lose control.
And so, when Czgowchwz has her breakdown, this Czech diva, a voice of such range existing terms do not suffice and she is deemed an Oltrano, channels some mystical force, an "utterly incredible avalanche of regal tone this majestic goddess unleashed," and causes a Countess to gasp, "My life, she's singing in the Irish!"
It was true. Mawrdew Czgowchwz that night sang the Liebestod for once and for all time in the same tongue the Irish once sang in of love and death and the Western World. For Czgowchwz is indeed Irish. Maev Cohalen. Thank you, reading gods.
Thus do the Irish affirm. Thus do the Irish deny. That is what their obstinate fiction means.
This happens in New York. Our oltrano will meet a male oltrano. They will do more than sing together. Like sharing "great globes" of ice cream. The English oltrano "wondered out loud about the Fourth of July":
"What does it mean to them, Maev?"
"I believe it means they must survive."
"They have done! Must it mean imperium?"
"Some say yes, and some say no."
_____________________________
*Which is how Czgowchwz is pronounced.
. . . pecking away all day at your window. And certain local flightless birds -
- are attempting to retain Lord Stanley's famous silverware. And, and, I'm just too cool to take a book to a baseball game, unlike this dude:
But let me tell you about this book, a novel, kind of, about an opera diva. And notwithstanding the two-week duration of reading, I really enjoyed it. And, and, I'm not really a fan of opera. Oh, I like the odd aria, and I could put Les pêcheurs de perles on repeat and listen to it all day long. But the comedic makeup and costuming, the overwrought plots, the kind of sing-talk in between the actual songs, has never worked for me. And, and, and, I prefer the male voices. But none of that is necessary. Indeed, there's a playlist of one of Czgowchwz' concerts, 30 songs; and I fired up the youtube . . . but I didn't get past the first number.
There's gorgeous* writing though: new, melodic, challenging, pyrotechnic. Sometimes it was this simple, yet capturing: The forties ended, and they did not.
Here's a fuller example, a scene where the diva has had a breakdown of sorts and Zwischen, a kind of psychiatrist, comes to examine her:
Zwischen arrived upon the jostling scene moments after everyone else, protesting: this was not one of his regular consultation days. Dame Sybil, huffed, outraged at this footling nicety: "Sod your bleeding regular consultation days, you mucky formalist Hun quack!" Zwischen gasped in umlauts, cowering backward up the grand staircase to the Czgowchwz sickroom. Sloshing neat tequila into a handy snifter, Dame Sybil fumed: "Officious little bugger!" Swallowing gulps of firewater, she loped into the music room "to play the shit out of something demonic by Scriabin" to achieve release (Vers la flamme, op. 72).
It's odd how reading years go. I'm supposed to be reading Henry James but then started reading various Irish novelists and a book of Irish folklore, sort of. And so, it became a year of reading Irish. This book would seem to be a break from that, but the reading gods do not like to lose control.
And so, when Czgowchwz has her breakdown, this Czech diva, a voice of such range existing terms do not suffice and she is deemed an Oltrano, channels some mystical force, an "utterly incredible avalanche of regal tone this majestic goddess unleashed," and causes a Countess to gasp, "My life, she's singing in the Irish!"
It was true. Mawrdew Czgowchwz that night sang the Liebestod for once and for all time in the same tongue the Irish once sang in of love and death and the Western World. For Czgowchwz is indeed Irish. Maev Cohalen. Thank you, reading gods.
Thus do the Irish affirm. Thus do the Irish deny. That is what their obstinate fiction means.
This happens in New York. Our oltrano will meet a male oltrano. They will do more than sing together. Like sharing "great globes" of ice cream. The English oltrano "wondered out loud about the Fourth of July":
"What does it mean to them, Maev?"
"I believe it means they must survive."
"They have done! Must it mean imperium?"
"Some say yes, and some say no."
_____________________________
*Which is how Czgowchwz is pronounced.
November 14, 2020
one of the funniest and campest novels i've ever read. every sentence is a marvel.
June 19, 2010
Joyce + Beckett + Waugh + Gaddis + Mexican soap operas + the 3 tenors + Callas + the silver fox + American Idol + Newyorkography + Schoenberg, Berg, Vivaldi, Puccini, Wagner, Janacek + Yeats in his crazy Irishman mode + fabulous. Ignore the grating introduction ("McCourt's subsequent work go even farther into the lunatic fringe, the only place where I feel at home"), don't worry about not keeping track of the characters, and enjoy.
August 6, 2007
"Mardu Gorgeous." Madcap highbrow. Czgowchwz, the titular diva, is the daughter of a fiery Irish revolutionary and "a poet-philosopher of the Prague Lingustic School." Behind the insane verbal arabesques, the plot: the erudite entourages of rival opera divas blood feuding in 1950s New York, using all weapons that their disposal--satirical verse broadsides, evil spells--to stymie each other. I'm told this reads like Firbank.
Read
January 10, 2018Perhaps this could best be read as an introductory volume to McCourt's Now Voyagers: Some Divisions of the Saga of Mawrdew Czgowchwz, Oltrano, Authenticated by Persons Represented Therein, Book One: The Night Sea Journey ;; at least judging by the first 14 pages of the latter. Patiently awaiting Book Two already.
____________
On the occasion of the NYRB re-issue, salvaging this out-of-print comedic meisterstück which has earned attention from the likes of Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom, this piece from The Advocate :: http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Mawrdew...
McCourt's partner of many a year also writes books :: Vincent Virga
A few more links on the wikipedia page :: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Mc...
____________
On the occasion of the NYRB re-issue, salvaging this out-of-print comedic meisterstück which has earned attention from the likes of Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom, this piece from The Advocate :: http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Mawrdew...
McCourt's partner of many a year also writes books :: Vincent Virga
A few more links on the wikipedia page :: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Mc...
October 20, 2013
This book is required reading for anyone who wants to understand New York City when it (like most of the western world) was ruled by opera. McCourt's prose resonates with the same frightening degree of manic intelligence and wit as Thomas Pynchon (there are many stylistic similarities between the two writers, who are of the same generation), and there's no question that McCourt should be as acclaimed as Pynchon, and probably would be except for the fact that McCourt is VERY gay (which in my world is obv an asset). I wrote a fuller review a few years ago when I first read it, but I can never say enough good things about this book. Like the soprano at its heart, it should be worshiped by everyone.
http://www.matthewgallaway.com/2009/1...
http://www.matthewgallaway.com/2009/1...
May 30, 2014
Simply DEviiine Dahlink! Fabulosity abounds in every ornate, baroque (in its camp guise rather than its Gassian) sentence. Bloody good fun from start to finish and highly recommended.
March 4, 2020
A literary Fellini by way of Rodgers and Hammerstein. McCourt writes with daunting esprit, not just voluble and more or less entertaining, but also with creative depth and vitality. While not essential reading, it's a marvelous, compulsively enjoyable work, a highly intelligent bagatelle.
sampled
December 10, 2013Read the first chapter. Firbankians need only apply.
April 26, 2009
This is not an especially deep book, but one that I happily declare a ripping good yarn. The story, about the rise, (nemesis's curse-induced) fall, and rise of an opera diva in New York in the 1950s, is somewhat flimsy, but the detailing and the chatty language make it stand out.
July 23, 2025
I'll give this to the author: He is entirely committed to carrying out his literary vision for all 205 pages of this... Hommage Masturbatoire a l'Opéra. How anyone without a near-encyclopedic knowledge of performance history, vocal fach, canonical repertory, or the roster of Golden Age luminaries is expected to make sense of this novel is a mystery. These niche concerns are catnip for we afficionados, but nobody else is likely to find them palatable. Not even as amuse-bouche.
Keeping most potential readers at a further distance is the persistently Baroque prose applied to the subject matter. Here is just one sentence truly plucked at random:
"Some ort-welding alchemy," wrote Percase, "intelligence arcane to those denied personal access - all necessarily - to that great lady in the dark, restored to Mawrdew Czgowchwz each and every faculty she had always commanded, all reinforced, moreover, by that singular perspex armor only the spiritual salvage-few purchase to gird their souls."
If you want to venture into the world of musical frivolity, I wouldn't direct you to this. Seek out Mozart's vocal canon in B-flat major, "Leck mich im Arsch" (K. 231). You'll get more satisfaction in two minutes than I've had in the week it took me to finish this.
2.5 stars
Keeping most potential readers at a further distance is the persistently Baroque prose applied to the subject matter. Here is just one sentence truly plucked at random:
"Some ort-welding alchemy," wrote Percase, "intelligence arcane to those denied personal access - all necessarily - to that great lady in the dark, restored to Mawrdew Czgowchwz each and every faculty she had always commanded, all reinforced, moreover, by that singular perspex armor only the spiritual salvage-few purchase to gird their souls."
If you want to venture into the world of musical frivolity, I wouldn't direct you to this. Seek out Mozart's vocal canon in B-flat major, "Leck mich im Arsch" (K. 231). You'll get more satisfaction in two minutes than I've had in the week it took me to finish this.
2.5 stars
December 8, 2008
I picked this up on whim (as I found it used and will read anything put out by NYRB)and was almost immediately taken with it. McCort weaves a fabulous tale about the mystery and history behind a notrious cult figure of a diva named Mawdrew Czgowchwz (read: Mardu Gorgeous).The ornate language and the opulent scenery make for delicious reading. (Although, be warned, I think the act of absorbing McCort's prose will make you a little gay. While the characters themselves are, for the most part, heterosexual, I have never encountered a more gay novel.) This satisfyed my feel-good-holiday-New-York itch. It is also a must-read for all those who, like me, yearn for the old Manhattan of lunch counters and cigarette girls, when the Plaza was still the Plaza and the Bowery was still the Bowery.
March 28, 2020
cool fantasy world
Read
March 30, 2023Sybaritic, majestic, sublime, James McCourt's Mawrdew Czgowchwz (pronounced "Mardu Gorgeous") is a whirlwind extravaganza of prose. Its style is reminiscent of Firbank, dense pages of purple decadence, full of exotic, sumptuous vocabularies and recherché words; its narrative mode is polyphonic, a chorus of bizarre characters and parenthetical badinage (a Bohemian opera diva, an Irish countess, irritable conductors, nuns and cardinals, all snarking, taunting and arguing). It recalls the modernist experiments of Joyce, Döblin, and Gaddis. Its plot is transcendental and anarchic: a new opera star, Mawrdew Czgowchwz, causes a sensation in the theatre world and quickly replaces the old favorite of the stage. Her performances result in raucous celebrations of her supernatural talent. She has invented a new kind of song: her voice is no longer a soprano but a magically liminal quivering "altrano" and she has fused music with mimicry ("musicry"). She can play all roles and often appears in multiple parts in a production. She attracts a cult of followers who worship her and defend her from any criticism. However, on her tour to New York, in an arresting rendition of Isolde, she is struck by a curse and falls into a coma. When she awakes, she can only speak in Erse. Under psychoanalysis in a monastery, she slowly comes to understand that she is not from Prague originally but is the daughter of a pro-Ireland revolutionary, "an Irish Boadicea" and a Czech poet-philosopher. She had repressed her memories after her husband was murdered by the Gestapo.
It is a Baktinian carnival, naturally culminating in a magnificent carnival; it is a baroque book that stages a baroque comedy. Novel, libretto, incantation, it is a genre-blurring pastiche. It washes over the reader, stunning and stupefying, beguiling and bewildering.
It is a Baktinian carnival, naturally culminating in a magnificent carnival; it is a baroque book that stages a baroque comedy. Novel, libretto, incantation, it is a genre-blurring pastiche. It washes over the reader, stunning and stupefying, beguiling and bewildering.
August 10, 2011
Brilliant. Hard to find a representative quote, as one is infinitely cleverer than the other. The novel's pace does seem to slow down once or twice, but that's because it hurtles forth at a dizzying speed of camp, passion and dementedness. Ken Russell could have turned it into a chef d'oeuvre.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The captive Irish princess-witch exploded, howling. WER WAGT MICH ZU HÖHNEN?!!!
Mawrdew Czgowchwz had begun.
Old Mary Cedrioli answered the front door. Admitting a giggling hag who clung (with filthy strega fingers) to a blazing lock of Mawrdew Czgowchwz's hair, the devil-driven venditrice of the Neriac high command felt something (she imagined) like lust rumbling in her high colonic regions. Wickedness furled a murky density through every dingy room of Casa Cedrioli.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The captive Irish princess-witch exploded, howling. WER WAGT MICH ZU HÖHNEN?!!!
Mawrdew Czgowchwz had begun.
Old Mary Cedrioli answered the front door. Admitting a giggling hag who clung (with filthy strega fingers) to a blazing lock of Mawrdew Czgowchwz's hair, the devil-driven venditrice of the Neriac high command felt something (she imagined) like lust rumbling in her high colonic regions. Wickedness furled a murky density through every dingy room of Casa Cedrioli.
August 18, 2014
Definitely one of the most, unique books I've read...sparkling, riotous prose that often delights yet at times is so richly layered as to be approaching impenetrable...an ode to opera, to a particular slice of mid-century NYC society, to life and language itself. And in the end, a brilliant story of discovering one's own life, love, and artistic soul amongst the frenetic backdrop of fame, art, and high society hijinks.
November 30, 2013
Got to page 70, could not finish it. I love opera, I got the opera/music references, but what was the point? Way too arch for me. I have had this book since 1975, was given to me by a very good friend, photographer, in NYC. Always thought I should try and try again, but Life...Is...Too...Damn...Short.
April 28, 2014
Five big glittering stars.
For people who 1. are opera fanatics, 2. enjoy camp, and, especially, 3. get postmodern lit. If you can't do all three, you shouldn't try rating it. If you don't know if you can do all three, but are game to try, then by all means: read it!
Mawrdew's Isolde debut. Oh. My. God.
For people who 1. are opera fanatics, 2. enjoy camp, and, especially, 3. get postmodern lit. If you can't do all three, you shouldn't try rating it. If you don't know if you can do all three, but are game to try, then by all means: read it!
Mawrdew's Isolde debut. Oh. My. God.
June 29, 2007
sorry - i just didn't get it. couldn't even finish it. does that make me a bad person?
February 7, 2008
Paterian, hothouse prose. Composition as ecstasy. Diva worship as plot. Best in throwaway lines.
July 7, 2014
...the words go galloping--winding on and on until the words said the reader...."To turn about, to abstract, to salute, to celebrate."
Read
October 20, 2017Mawrdew Czgowchwz is a book about opera, and an opera itself. It starts with the cast listing, 70 characters' names with helpful notes, each name and note wittier and more droll than the last in the broadest possible way, beginning with the current diva Ms. "Gorgeous" herself and on through the heroic tenor Achille Plonque, the composer Merovig Creplaczx, the fiscal friend Contessa Cassia Verde-Dov'e, and on down to Wedgewood the butler and Mrs. Grudget, Mawrdew's attendant at the Plaza Hotel.
The cast listing is used often in such a populous work; the plot, on the other hand, is operatically thin: jealousy, a curse, defeat, return. James McCourt might have ended the book there; the following sections, while continually clever and malicious and adoring, begin to drone on like unedited newspaper accounts of especially egregious examples of conspicuous consumption.
However -- the book is fun. For those inclined toward opera's magic, it's marvelous fun. And for those whose opera-going is in NYC, it's superb, beginning as it does in the late 1940s-early 1950s when the Old Met still stood, occupying a full block between 39th and 40th Streets on Broadway and one could buy an orchestra seat that was totally obstructed, behind a very thick pillar, and the Plaza was the most elegant of hotels and condos hadn't been invented. Scenes in the street and the parks, notable Central Park of course, seemingly made as a garden for the Plaza drip with nostalgia for those days, when most people in the city were not tourists but lived and worked there.
The most appealing characters are the Secret Seven, proto-hippies living communally in the Lower East Side before it was the East Village, who live for art, especially opera, and are the operatives for much that goes on in the preposterous plot.
Hovering over it all is the spirit of James McCourt's fellow countryman James Joyce, whose language keeps peeping out in words and phrases for those familiar with his work.
Thus, many layers of pleasure -- even if the reader enjoys only some of them, it will satisfy, especially those with happy memories of the Old Met. The New York Review of Books edition features on the cover a mosaic of an opera singer seen on the wall of the subway station under the New Met at Lincoln Center -- curiously unsettling.
Finally, and as usual, don't read the introduction till after you've read the book, if ever. Regrettably it regards an imaginative work as a piece of sociology and history: we've got lots of books to tell us as much as we want to know about those things, at the time of this novel, and at any other time. This is art, and should be approached as such!
The cast listing is used often in such a populous work; the plot, on the other hand, is operatically thin: jealousy, a curse, defeat, return. James McCourt might have ended the book there; the following sections, while continually clever and malicious and adoring, begin to drone on like unedited newspaper accounts of especially egregious examples of conspicuous consumption.
However -- the book is fun. For those inclined toward opera's magic, it's marvelous fun. And for those whose opera-going is in NYC, it's superb, beginning as it does in the late 1940s-early 1950s when the Old Met still stood, occupying a full block between 39th and 40th Streets on Broadway and one could buy an orchestra seat that was totally obstructed, behind a very thick pillar, and the Plaza was the most elegant of hotels and condos hadn't been invented. Scenes in the street and the parks, notable Central Park of course, seemingly made as a garden for the Plaza drip with nostalgia for those days, when most people in the city were not tourists but lived and worked there.
The most appealing characters are the Secret Seven, proto-hippies living communally in the Lower East Side before it was the East Village, who live for art, especially opera, and are the operatives for much that goes on in the preposterous plot.
Hovering over it all is the spirit of James McCourt's fellow countryman James Joyce, whose language keeps peeping out in words and phrases for those familiar with his work.
Thus, many layers of pleasure -- even if the reader enjoys only some of them, it will satisfy, especially those with happy memories of the Old Met. The New York Review of Books edition features on the cover a mosaic of an opera singer seen on the wall of the subway station under the New Met at Lincoln Center -- curiously unsettling.
Finally, and as usual, don't read the introduction till after you've read the book, if ever. Regrettably it regards an imaginative work as a piece of sociology and history: we've got lots of books to tell us as much as we want to know about those things, at the time of this novel, and at any other time. This is art, and should be approached as such!
July 19, 2021
exceptionally sick baroque prose and it's got references to all your favourite operas so you get to feel extra cultured!
August 4, 2015
I'm a fan of Ronald Firbank so I was interested in reading a book by a contemporary writer in the same mould. Certainly there are some resemblances, not the least in the naming of characters; you can't get more Firbankian than Halcyon Q. Paranoy or Pierrot Deslieux. However, unlike Firbank whose settings were often exotic, bordering on the fantastic, McCourt has set his novel in a very specific place and time - Manhatten in the mid-1950s - and among a sub-set of citizenry who might be best described as your proverbial opera queens for whom the divas and the Met are the centre of their social world. For me the one element that does seem fantastic is the level of accomplishment assigned to the Czgowchwzians ( presumably pronounced "Gorgeousians" ), the Mawrdew fans who gather around Countess Madge O'Meaghre Gautier. In one set piece the Countess assembles 21 friends, including the diva, for an opulent Winter Solstice dinner which would make a formal banquet at Windsor Castle pale in comparison. During a game of charades each of her guests is asked to act out a role from an opera or similar work along with the artist associated with its performance, and the guest who guesses correctly is then asked to play appropriate music (or a parody) on her spinet. When the absence of gingerbread men on the tree is noted, the gourmet cook of the group disappears into the kitchen to whip up 41 gingerbread figures decorated with icing to represent a character in their heroine's repertoire. Did similar groupings of talented individuals flourish in post-war New York; or are we meant to consider the unlikelihood of this scenario in the real world then or now ? My only criticism of McCourt's novel is his failure to create memorable portraits among a cast of 60 + : during my reading I had to flip to his list of characters to identify Halcyon or Tangent, Gaia or Cassia, Dolly or Trixie. For anyone who is in anyway familiar with opera, if only from radio and Met broadcasts at the local multi-plex, there is much to enjoy in this entertaining and witty account of the opera fan culture of the recent past.
August 6, 2016
Mawrdew Czgowchwz, pronounced Mardu Gorgeous, has been on the ‘must read’ list of many an opera cognoscenti; so I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it.
Opera lovers (and queens) have had love affairs with many great divas throughout time. From the 1950’s to the 80’s, the cult of the Diva was at its full 20th century height. When divas Renata Tebaldi, Joan Sutherland, Montserrat Caballé, Birgit Nilsson, Leontyne Price and the Über Diva-in-Excelsis, La Divina herself - Maria Callas were at the height of their vocal powers (and past it), their fans would stand hours upon hours in the cold, rain and snow for tickets to their performances; and they were not afraid to physically confront anyone who criticized or demeaned their Icon. The only contemporary comparison is the fanatical obsession with the music icons Barbra Streisand, Diana Ross, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Lady Gaga and the late Whitney Houston.
Mawrdew Czgowchwz deals with the fandom of one particular diva - Madame Czgowchwz; and her obsessed, passionate and devoted fans, plus her rivals (all true divas must have worthy rivals).
I wanted to love this book, but sadly couldn’t. Mr. McCourt's writing is very florid and grand like the singing of his M.C., instead of simply getting to the point; though I guess that is the point of his writing style. It soon became too tiresome and boring for me, although it does contain its certain amount of charm and biting wit.
Opera lovers (and queens) have had love affairs with many great divas throughout time. From the 1950’s to the 80’s, the cult of the Diva was at its full 20th century height. When divas Renata Tebaldi, Joan Sutherland, Montserrat Caballé, Birgit Nilsson, Leontyne Price and the Über Diva-in-Excelsis, La Divina herself - Maria Callas were at the height of their vocal powers (and past it), their fans would stand hours upon hours in the cold, rain and snow for tickets to their performances; and they were not afraid to physically confront anyone who criticized or demeaned their Icon. The only contemporary comparison is the fanatical obsession with the music icons Barbra Streisand, Diana Ross, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Lady Gaga and the late Whitney Houston.
Mawrdew Czgowchwz deals with the fandom of one particular diva - Madame Czgowchwz; and her obsessed, passionate and devoted fans, plus her rivals (all true divas must have worthy rivals).
I wanted to love this book, but sadly couldn’t. Mr. McCourt's writing is very florid and grand like the singing of his M.C., instead of simply getting to the point; though I guess that is the point of his writing style. It soon became too tiresome and boring for me, although it does contain its certain amount of charm and biting wit.
September 1, 2010
I'm not sure why this book exists. I kept waiting for the endless parade of histrionic (if marginally entertaining) setpieces to end and an actual novel to begin, but it never did. I guess that is exactly how some people would describe the experience of sitting through an opera, but that's a little too subtle and facile an idea on which to build a 200pp. novel about old money Gotham and its love affair with Wagner-belting divas. Whatever the case, this is yet another NYRB Classics book that is almost unbelievably bad. Hey NYRB editors, maybe there is a reason these books went out of print in the first place?
October 5, 2012
This is hysterically funny if you've had classical voice training, or are an opera and art song aficionado.
Gotta admit that to me the funniest thing in the book, from a music and opera geek standpoint, was the giant, utterly-impossible-to-happen-in-"real-life" return recital program complete with encore upon encore upon encore.
Gotta admit that to me the funniest thing in the book, from a music and opera geek standpoint, was the giant, utterly-impossible-to-happen-in-"real-life" return recital program complete with encore upon encore upon encore.
January 2, 2024
It took me ages to read this because the writing was so flowery, flamboyant, fabulous (and sometimes alliterative) that in order to really follow properly and enjoy it fully I had to read it out loud.
March 20, 2013
An opera lover's delight...campy, funny, and very entertaining.
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