Up betimes...

Listening to a harp concerto by the little thought-of Jan Ladislav Dussek (1760 - 1812)--in his day something of a superstar. Can't say as I much care for the genteel insipidity of his music, but I'm fascinated reading about the man (in his youth admired for his stunning personal beauty), the innovative composer and inventor (he invented the Broadwood grand piano, an example of which was sent to Beethoven, who cherished it)--and who was, as shines through the cracks of bare historical narrative, an irresistibly attractive personality. Evidently, to know him him was to love him, even when he grew enormously fat, as he did once his youth was past. But as a twenty-something he ignited passions in the royalest and most imperial of "bosoms" (a polite way of saying "cooch" when referring to the locus amoris of Catherine II of Russia)--and the story of the fair Bohemian's having to flee Russia just ahead of Catherine's secret police, is amusing enough, knowing what we [apparently do] know about her insatiable lubricity, but hilarious when we imagine how Casanova would have told it.

That's a portrait of Dussek looking Heavenward, at the bottom near the text, and above it are the people known to have loved, or at least extremely liked him, from Catherine the Lascivious, through Marie Antoinette (who, notably being a harpist, probably appreciated him as a composer for that instrument), John Broadwood (whose portrait appears twice because I have not yet mastered the knack of removing pictures once I've posted them) and Prince von Metternich, who really appears to have had a Henry V/Falstaff bromance with him. The tiny little picture you almost can't see is Beethoven.