Amanda Knox Prosecutors in deep doodoo......

Maybe somebody here can help me with this one.....

Last Saturday I'd finished some business in Houston and was in the process of heading back towards the heart of the Bible belt where I live and...

I get into my little black Honda which I had the good new SeriusXM radio installed in a year and a half or so ago and turn the radio on and...

There was Margaret Chuntwait on the Met Opera channel describing the first act of Guiseppi Verdi's La Forza del Destino (Force of Destiny). As she described it, the heroine (who I believe I remember her saying was named Leonora) and her boyfriend/lover are in the process of eloping and riding out of town when her father shows up and confronts the two; angry words are spoken; a duel is agreed to right then and there and:

The boyfriend decides he's not going to shoot his bride's father, tosses his pistol on the ground and the pistol, an old single-shot flint-lock dueling pistol, hits the ground, goes off, and shoots the father between the eyes bang/pow, and the guy is lying there on the ground grave-yard dead. I mean, this **** is at least as good as Jerry Clowers story about the monkey shooting the error-prone coon dog...

And I'm thinking to myself:

Quote:

You know, Snake, you must be some sort of a serious asshole, I mean all of those Italian people are gonna be sitting there crying their eyes out and YOU're gonna be the only person in the audience sitting there cheering and applauding (and probably laughing your ass off)...

And so I'm driving South and they play the overture and then a bit of nondescript singing and then about 35 miles South of Houston there's a Texaco station with good carry-out food and I stop for gas and then go in and get a chicken barBQ sandwich and come back out, start the car and turn the radio on again and I assumed I was going to be hearing some really sad music, i.e. people grieving over Leonora's father but, WHOA, they're playing some of the jolliest music you'd ever want to hear.

That's the question: Is Forza del Destino supposed to be a tragedy or a comedy and what is the normal audience reaction when the girl's father gets shot? Is it possible that everybody reacts the way I would??

I mean, they could probably make a super comedy out of the thing by having the girl and her friend end up in the same courtroom and with the same judge as Amanda Knox and her boyfriend but I've never heard of an opera quite that intense....

I've not seen any sort of a response to this and I'd still be curious as to whether Forza del Destino is supposed to be a tragedy or a comedy, or at least what the part with the dueling pistol is supposed to be...