Fact-checking opera is a silly endeavour
Yet here I go
Feminist avant la lettre, intellectual and art connoisseur, friend of René Descartes, modern woman demanding freedom to live her life as she pleases? A lesbian, too? The Montreal Opera & Canadian Opera Company co-production La Reine garçon (at the COC Jan 31-Feb 15) suggests so. How accurate is this glamourous portrait, though? I’ve consulted Veronica Buckley’s Christina Queen of Sweden: The Restless Life of a European Eccentric (2004) to find out. If you are not a subscriber but would like to read the piece, it will be printed in the next issue of Wholenote, which you can pick up for free at most music venues and in many cafes and libraries in Ontario. It'll also be up on the WN website by next Thursday.
Regular readers will remember that I trekked to Montreal last February for the world premiere.
Was the actual Queen Christina (1626-1689) an intellectual and knowledgeable about art?
Not by any current standards.