The free association of a freelance artist, no more!

At one time, I watched the 1937 film Firefly (Double Play at the Soviet box office), a musical melodrama, most likely a left-wing Hollywood hint to General Franco. The movie is primitively stupid, but Jeanette MacDonald is good there, and so is Allen Jones.

Music for the film “Firefly” by two composers – Herbert Stothart and Rudolf Frimy.

The theme is the “heroic struggle” of the Spanish people against the invasion of Napoleon. Interestingly, there were only TWO countries on the entire continent that allegedly organized the “heroic” guerrilla movement against the French troops, and both were on the margins of a rapidly progressing European civilization, because the nineteenth century had already arrived: Inquisitorial Spain and serf Russia!

Spain generally “distinguished itself”: The last Auto-de-fe, the public burning of a man at the stake, took place in Spain in 1830!!!

The only thing I liked about the film was Don Diego’s “Donkey Serenade.” A talented song! Don Diego (Allen Jones) sings to the heroine, cabaret dancer Nina Maria Azaro (Jeanette McDonald), riding in a “carriage” pulled by donkeys.

And suddenly something similar popped into my mind: the Aria of Figaro, which he sings to Cherubino’s Page in Mozart’s opera The Marriage Figaro” based on Beaumarchais’ comedy “Mad Day or the Marriage of Figaro”.

The plot with practically the same names appears in Rossini’s opera The Barber of Seville.

And yet, Legato’s thinking presented to my mental eye, during this aria of Figaro, something completely strange: Monkeys were always spinning, jumping from branch to branch, swinging on their tails, flying up a tree and descending just as quickly, and other purely monkey-like cute antics and jumps.

But the aria is about something entirely different!

“The boy is frisky, curly-haired, in love,

Adonis, seduced by a woman’s caress,

Is it not enough to spin and roll,

Isn’t it time to be a man?”

Cherubino, a gentle and pampered young man (the name means little Cherub in Italian. This means that the composer’s last name is Cherubini (meaning Cherubim), and his part is usually performed by female singers.

But why would Figaro, who himself remains in the warm and safe place of Count Almaviva’s valet, begin to read edifying sermons to the young man, urging him to go into military service?

The hypocrisy of humans?

So monkeys appeared in my mind, our narrow-minded ancestors.

Although it is a mortal sin to associate innocent animals, just hopping along the branches, with a terrible two-legged creature hatched from their GENETIC FLAW, predatory mutant apes and, involuntarily, cannibals who devoured each other for two million years and “thus won” – THUS developing our dear “anthropocentric intelligence”, that is, Cannibalistic!

If the first CREATORS of life on the planet, algae and plants had known what kind of creepy creature would crown the end of this “relay race of life”, they probably would have immediately left the race and would not have transformed the Earth’s atmosphere and water two billion years ago.

But THEN they DID NOT KNOW how their hard and noble work would end!

That’s how we usually, always, START SOMETHING THOUGHTLESSLY.

As Chernomyrdin wisely said about the whole history of life on Earth:

“We wanted the best, but it turned out as always!”

So, Figaro’s aria confirms…

14 IV 2025