Posted: Mar 23, 2017 8:51 am
I wasn't talking about Rieu, but about my mother. The sort of shit Rieu does (flamboyant classical knees-up) was definitely fashionable where and when she was growing up (rural Czech Republic, 1920s/30s). Her own parents and grandparents were the sort of people who brought their instruments to parties and played their party pieces, many of which - Viennese waltzes and the like - would be in Rieu's repertoire.
I agree, though, that even then it probably harked back to an imagined Golden Age, or at least a romanticised vision of what it must be like in the aristocrats' palaces.
I agree, though, that even then it probably harked back to an imagined Golden Age, or at least a romanticised vision of what it must be like in the aristocrats' palaces.