Sausages, Soups & Operatic Cooks | 1
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David Hackett
This is part 1 of 3 in a series about composers' eating habits, by David Hackett. Read part 1 and 2.
George Frideric Handel (1685 – 1759) is famous for his operas and celebrated oratorio, Messiah. But he is also remembered for his bon viveur lifestyle and colossal appetite for food.
Whenever he went on tour, he used to run up enormous restaurant bills. Having once ordered dinner for two, a waiter asked Handel whether he was expecting company. “I am the company,” Handel replied before chomping his way through both meals.
Handel also declared that his cook knew more about composing than one of his great operatic rivals, Christoph Willibald Gluck. But the comment was slightly less insulting than it might first appear.
The cook in question – who had the brilliant name of Gustavus Waltz – was a trained musician and singer and had performed in several of Handel’s operas.
So, a singing cook for a foodie-composer: it seems like an ideal match!
A human composing machine who slept only five hours per night, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791) needed plenty of sustenance to keep himself going.
Fortunately, he lived in Vienna at a time where eating lightly in polite society was regarded as almost taboo.
The composer’s breakfast would usually comprise chocolate, apple streusel, souffléd eggs and Wienerschnitzel. Lunch and dinner could include such delicacies as tripe soup, grilled sturgeon, braised pigeon and even liver dumplings with sauerkraut.
Less propitious was Mozart’s partiality for pork cutlets. At the time a deadly parasitic worm lurked in undercooked pork, and some musicologists now believe that Mozart’s sudden, untimely demise may have been brought on by eating a bad chop.
To read more from David Hackett, go to www.musicbytheyear.com.