OKLAHOMA!

@BonfireLady - what I meant was at the point they are singing Dear Theodosia he doesn’t have a daughter; he has a son, Burr has a daughter. (Also, I clearly can’t count! 8 children, plus the wee adopted one who lived with them as a child)

I can see on rereading your original comment I misunderstood what you were getting at, bringing up his daughter; I thought you were conflating Burr’s child with his

I was trying to stick to the “Hamilton the musical” story, not actual Alexander Hamilton’s life - because this thread is about sexual politics in musicals - and in the story of the musical, it’s the combined grief.

Martha Washington’s tom cat wasn’t named after him, he never did “punch the burser” (LMM just liked the rhyme with “Burr, sir”), Angelica was married for 3 years when the Schuyler sisters met Hamilton and there was not a romance (beyond a misplaced comma in a letter) but there was a strong and flirtatious friendship of letters. (He had a similarly close relationship with Peggy).

“My father has no sons” that Angelica sings conveniently forgets her 3 brothers (poor Mrs Schuyler - 15 children, 7 of whom died in infancy!)

So there’s a lot of rejigging timelines and making stuff up, but that’s theatre.

I’d like to apologise to @Treaclewell and everyone for the massive Hamilton derailment.

In my defence, I’ve been ill all week and this is the most fun conversation I’ve had in days.

Bonfire, LMM’s book on the creation of the Hamilton stage production is fascinating (Hamilton: The Revolution) as is Giles Terera’s Hamilton And Me diary. (I think Terera is even better than Leslie Odom Jr, and although Daveed Diggs is the best Lafayette, Jason Pennycooke is the best Jefferson.)

oh, and Top Gun sucks and always did.

@AmeliaEarache I defer to your 5 times over my 2... and it's great to "meet" a fellow fan 😁

Minor quibble: we've gone from "Hamilton doesn't have a daughter" to "he had seven children, two of them girls"...

Anyway, it prompted me to look for information about the real Eliza and (as is often the case in the arts), it turns out that things didn't quite happen in the same order as IRL. She did leave him after the affair and went to...

"join her parents in Albany, where their son William Stephen was born on August 4, 1797. She returned to her marital house in New York City in early September 1797, in part because the local medical doctor had been unable to cure their eldest son Philip, who had accompanied her to Albany and contracted typhus. Elizabeth and Alexander reconciled and remained married, and had two more children together."

It turns out they had eight children in total (I had assumed only 2 from Philip singing about only having a sister): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Schuyler_Hamilton So it wasn't the grief that brought them back together, it seems like maybe it was acceptance/practicality on her part.

Perhaps "gaslighting" is the wrong word but the emotional journey we're taken on (maybe emotional manipulation is a better phrase?) is that it's a Happy Ending because they are back together. There are so many examples of stories in theatre and film where women are conditioned to just accept loveable rogue behaviour in men. Also to accept a position as being of interest purely through the lens of sexiness - I watched the original Top Gun again a couple of years ago and saw it in a whole new light: on the first 2 occasions Maverick meets Charlie he 1) sings to her, making it obvious he's interested 2) tells her she's wasting time with the man she's with at the restaurant, follows her in to the ladies' and suggests they have sex on the sinks. I thought that was romantic, loveable rogue-ishness when I was a teenager (probably because it was pretty normal to portray men and women in this way and create "love stories" with this foundation)🤦‍♀️

However, I fully agree that in the face of 7 Brides et al, Hamilton barely registers for deeply messed up sexual politics.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001g4rn this is a very touching take on Oklahoma.

I can still enjoy these old things but I do see them through different eyes now I'm older. The over the top stereotype of the black housekeeper in Tom and Jerry for example, later replaced with a stereotyped Irish housekeeper if I remember.

One I can't stand is the song More Than Words. It just sounds like a man pestering his gf for sex. It's whole premise is 'You would if you loved me ...prove you love me..'. It's yukky.

Look, when she sang 'You make me want to shout..' it wasn't necessarily an expression of pain, it.....oh right. Berg. Right. I'll get my coat

The dangers of being a cool wife (usually regarding the husbands increasingly weird porn habit which will end in you being in a weird foursome relationship because "you said you would accept the darkest parts of me"). Tiresome.

Or Lulu.

very good. now pick the bones out of Bluebeards Castle.

As long as it involves eating and drinking opportunities as well (I feel very reassured by your username 😃- other mumsnetters with an interest in eating and drinking opera are also most welcome.

We could set up an opera philosophy society

oooo now there's a nice sophisticated take, biscuits do you hire yourself out for after opera drinkies and analysis?

Its actually nice to watch as if its an opera about a dangerous cult performed through the perspective of the cult members themselves. So the amazing Aria the lady of the night gives (kill Sarastor or I will never ever love you again child) is actually what the daughter, completely absorbed in the cult as she is, is hearing her mother say. What the mother is actually saying could be completely different. But it still feels as emotionally true and engaging from that perspective as from the other.

I know biscuits - I absolutely love the music but it is difficult to watch the whole opera when they kindly translate everything because music I have listened to happily for decades suddenly becomes WTF???

The main message of the Magic Flute is "cults are great", and "the mother who is upset because her ex kidnapped their daughter and brought her up in the cult and who now wants to rescue her brainwashed child? Yeah, she's EVIL. Cult leader guy is great". But that's also basically him being a Freemason. Its still a great Opera.

Can I strongly recommend the book "Underfoot in Show Business" by Helene Hanff (mainly known as author of" 84 Charing Cross Road")? There's quite a good description here - https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Underfoot-in-Show-Business-Audiobook/B0DDTZ7352 - but the point of recommending it is that she includes a description of her involvement in the very first Theatre Guild production of Oklahoma! which is absolutely hilarious. They were all totally convinced that it was going to be an absolute flop, because wholesome musicals about the birth of a new state with farmhands and cowboys just weren't fashionable, let alone dodgy subplots about perverts lusting after the heroine. I remember particularly the fact that they were all rolling their eyes when someone came up with the idea of adding an exclamation mark to the title.

Off to dig out my old copy for a re-read...

To be fair, I think she was just shocked to find he had children. Had he married their mother?

yes, and this-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Entführung_aus_dem_Serail
is a bit dodgy too.

Fair enough. History is littered with them.

Oh my @lonelywater (on a non-musical theme I have a reprint of the very first ever Beano annual from 1940 which a much younger DD was delighted with until she discovered a character with a very racist name 😳).

Back to music classical doesn't escape. See most of Mozart particularly Zauberflote in which calm spiritual men are harangued melodically by the Queen of the Night.

not really-the story the song tells is disgusting.one of the few "how the hell did that ever happen?" things from history.

That is grim, but without the horrible dehumanising illustration it might be very slightly less grim.

Yes, I know the lyrics (seen stage production 5 times etc, seen the filmed version 4 times, near word perfect on the soundtrack, and am a tedious Hamilton nerd of 8 years standing. My poor neighbours!). But you brought his daughter into it, and that doesn’t make sense to me.

I was saying that he isn’t gaslighting us, which your post claimed. He’s making the hopeful and optimistic promises to newborn Philip (as Burr does to Theodosia) that every new parent makes, and he means them - as does Burr. Just as the Constitution makes bold and hopeful promises (linked in the lyric “you will come of age with our young nation”) and is full of contradictions (“so is independence”)

But as Act 2 shows, what starts as hope, optimism and bold intentions gets bogged down in power struggles, pettiness and human weakness.

That’s not gaslighting, that’s failing to live up to your aspirations. We’re all guilty of that I think.

He betrays Eliza twice - first by sleeping with Maria and paying off her husband, then by making it public. And she punishes him (rightly so) by completely withdrawing from him. It’s only their combined grief that reunites them.

Hamilton is a self-serving asshole when it comes to infidelity, but I don’t think he’s guilty of what your post suggested.

I also don’t think his eldest daughter is remotely relevant - he had seven children, two of them girls, and only the elder Philip is a character in the musical. (After Philip’s death they had another son and called him Philip as well) The rest of the family are all offstage because they have no bearing on the story.

I don’t think there’s any reason to believe he’s a poor father. Workaholic, sure, but comes down to see the piano recital (and Eliza’s hilarious beatboxing) and clearly loves him very much.
Philip goes to him for advice - hell, the duel is because Philip’s so outraged about the slurs on his father’s name.

Christ, I definitely pay too much attention to that show.

Anyway, in the face of 7 Brides et al, Hamilton barely registers for deeply messed up sexual politics.

Yes, the duet is each of them singing to their respective child. It's one of my favourite songs, when both men are on the stage singing independently of each other (to their own child) and together (about what the future will hold).

Hamilton's daughter is only ever mentioned in passing e.g. by Philip in the song Take a Break:

Daddy, daddy, look
My name is Philip
I am a poet
I wrote this poem just to show it
And I just turned nine
You can write rhymes but you can't write mine
What!
I practice French and play piano with my mother
Uh-huh
I have a sister but I want a little brother
Okay
My daddy's trying to start America's bank
Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq!
Bravo!