Germination
6 March 2025 07:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeThe mixed salad seed and one of the sweet peas (I can't remember how many I actually planted!) has definitely germinated, as have the marigolds. I have put another three sweet-pea seeds into the other pot in which nothing has visibly come up (and didn't find any trace of the old ones while doing so :-p) -- I don't really need all that many sweet-pea plants and won't have room for a lot, but since it is mixed colour seed I should like to have at least some variety.
I also attempted to germinate some more of the dwarf pea seed that I tried to get pea-sprouts from over the winter (with a zero success rate). This time I put the soaked peas into a jam-jar down the side of some wet newspaper, and several of them are now showing roots already, probably because it is now spring and not the middle of winter ;-)
I finished watching the second episode of the Soviet 'Monte Cristo', which basically covers just the episode of Albert and Luigi Vampa, the episode where the Count gives Caderousse a diamond and he proceeds to murder the jeweller who offers to buy it (and, in this version, is then murdered by his wife in his turn) plus a return to the framing opera scene on which we started -- although we do get to see Dantes arriving on the isle of Monte Cristo and searching for the treasure 'in real time', which if I remember correctly is only ever mentioned as a brief piece of backstory in the book. But that does leave an awful lot of plot to be covered in the final episode...
I'm afraid this production really does nothing for me; Viktor Avilov as the Count has a trick of staring unblinking through too-wide protuberant eyes which makes him look positively insane, and ought to make everyone around him run a mile.
The songs in this case are not only incomprehensible but are not musically to my taste. I still understand very little of what is going on save by trying to match the images with my memories of the book (who were the army officers who preceded the Count to the inn of Caderousse, and why were they apparently under his command?), and was very confused by what turned out to be a flashback to events *before* Dantes' wedding, and by the way that Albert (or was it his friend Franz d'Epinay?) seemed to escape from Luigi Vampa in one scene, only to be found imprisoned by him several scenes later.
I did manage to gather from the dialogue that Mercedes simply regards Fernand in the light of a brother, rather than his actually *being* a possessive and over-protective brother, and they thus marry -- though I wasn't quite clear why, after she violently rejects him -- as per the book. And from looking at the cast list I accidentally discovered that the same actor apparently plays Mercedes' son Albert and the young Edmond Dantes, which explains why the Count is so profoundly dumbstruck when he meets young Albert; I had assumed that it must be on account of a resemblance to Mercedes, because I certainly didn't recognise him. I hadn't even realised that they had gone to the lengths of using a different performer for the earlier scenes, I'm afraid; when they are wearing the same wig, the two actors with long faces and big bony noses look extremely similar, and apparently Avilov dubbed in the voice for those scenes.
Young Dantes (with Danglars on the right)
And with his Albert de Morcerf wig on he looks completely different:
Fernand and Albert de Morcerf (with Boyarsky on the left)
But I suppose the intended implication must be that this Albert is the son of Edmond and Mercedes, which is definitely a different kettle of fish... (But I really don't see how that can be the case, given the timeline as depicted!)
I also attempted to germinate some more of the dwarf pea seed that I tried to get pea-sprouts from over the winter (with a zero success rate). This time I put the soaked peas into a jam-jar down the side of some wet newspaper, and several of them are now showing roots already, probably because it is now spring and not the middle of winter ;-)
I finished watching the second episode of the Soviet 'Monte Cristo', which basically covers just the episode of Albert and Luigi Vampa, the episode where the Count gives Caderousse a diamond and he proceeds to murder the jeweller who offers to buy it (and, in this version, is then murdered by his wife in his turn) plus a return to the framing opera scene on which we started -- although we do get to see Dantes arriving on the isle of Monte Cristo and searching for the treasure 'in real time', which if I remember correctly is only ever mentioned as a brief piece of backstory in the book. But that does leave an awful lot of plot to be covered in the final episode...
I'm afraid this production really does nothing for me; Viktor Avilov as the Count has a trick of staring unblinking through too-wide protuberant eyes which makes him look positively insane, and ought to make everyone around him run a mile.
The songs in this case are not only incomprehensible but are not musically to my taste. I still understand very little of what is going on save by trying to match the images with my memories of the book (who were the army officers who preceded the Count to the inn of Caderousse, and why were they apparently under his command?), and was very confused by what turned out to be a flashback to events *before* Dantes' wedding, and by the way that Albert (or was it his friend Franz d'Epinay?) seemed to escape from Luigi Vampa in one scene, only to be found imprisoned by him several scenes later.
I did manage to gather from the dialogue that Mercedes simply regards Fernand in the light of a brother, rather than his actually *being* a possessive and over-protective brother, and they thus marry -- though I wasn't quite clear why, after she violently rejects him -- as per the book. And from looking at the cast list I accidentally discovered that the same actor apparently plays Mercedes' son Albert and the young Edmond Dantes, which explains why the Count is so profoundly dumbstruck when he meets young Albert; I had assumed that it must be on account of a resemblance to Mercedes, because I certainly didn't recognise him. I hadn't even realised that they had gone to the lengths of using a different performer for the earlier scenes, I'm afraid; when they are wearing the same wig, the two actors with long faces and big bony noses look extremely similar, and apparently Avilov dubbed in the voice for those scenes.
Young Dantes (with Danglars on the right)
And with his Albert de Morcerf wig on he looks completely different:
Fernand and Albert de Morcerf (with Boyarsky on the left)
But I suppose the intended implication must be that this Albert is the son of Edmond and Mercedes, which is definitely a different kettle of fish... (But I really don't see how that can be the case, given the timeline as depicted!)