A clue about the unpleasant surprise over breakfast - a disobedient human body part is found in a loaf of bread...

You've got it on the Nose, Harpy!

New Quiz Question for May 1st!

Tell us about the (many!) operas in which the servants outwit or overthrow the masters?

[I wonder why opera audiences have found this such a potent theme across the centuries, eh? ]

La Serva Padrona? (I don't know that one but it sounds as if it should fit the category.)

And Powder her Face. They don't exactly outwit or overthrow her, but the staff get uppity.

Alas, Rigoletto fails to outwit or overthrow the Duke.  If he had, perhaps the opera could have been a light-hearted comedy.

It's an interesting distinction, PW.  Leskov's novel dates from 1865, four years after the Emancipation Of Serfdom Act (1861).  His theme of "masters and servants" was clearly a topical one, as many in Russia were now experiencing the results of the Act, whose repercussions had proceeded in some unexpected directions.  (Many serfs had become bankrupts, as a result of their former owners being unwilling or unable to pay them wages, and driving them from the homes they had previously held as indentured serfs. Chekhov's father, for example, was an emancipated serf who went bankrupt in 1876, unable to manage his money or a planned business as a shopkeeper). 

However, the story is set in the era prior to 1861, as Leskov states that the events happened "a number of years ago", and refers to Sergey's status as a serf several times (both overtly, and through vocabulary that indicates Sergey's relationship to the Izmailovs - terms of address, etc).  The fact that he'd been a runaway serf from elsewhere further diminishes his social status - he was the lowest of the low.

It's a moot point whether the DSCH opera retains Sergey's status as a serf, or whether the libretto has made him an employee?  I would say the former, because of the vocabulary used?   And also that everyone would have known Leskov as an author from the days of serfdom. (Leskov has a rather "Dickensian" reputation as a social-reformer whose medium was the novel). But it's a matter of point-of-view, in the end.

I'm sure you're right!  That very duality may have been part of the rationale behind the stinging critique in Pravda - although I fear it was actually an enormous kneejerk that didn't feel the need for any objectivity behind it    It's interesting that DSCH's perfectly innocent, and even mostly tub-thumpingly on-side ballet BRIGHT BROOK (aka LIMPID STREAM, aka  SVETLIE RUCHEI) of 1932 got banned along with LADY MAC... allegedly for "mocking" the proletariat.

Still looking for my elderly aristo, murdered by his own servant?  Clue - this is a subplot of the opera in which it appears, the aristo is the father of the opera's heroine.  We never see him again after Act One, and only learn of his death from reported speech later.

I don't know my Strinberg that well, but presumably Alwyn's Miss Julie has a servant who gets the better of his boss's daughter in one sense.

Bravo for the COSI mention

To put you out of your misery, the valet who kills his master is Thierry in CARMELITES... in Act One he has already scared Blanche in a corridor, but the Marquis de Force tells his son that Thierry's been their faithful servant for years.  It later transpires (when Blanche runs back to her old home, where she's confronted by the New Mother Superior who has followed her) that the servants have joined the revolution, and Thierry has "dealt with" the old Marquis.