21 April—Our abject apologies to Adolf Hitler for missing his 135^th birthday yesterday. His name never was Schicklgruber, by the way. His father, Alois Hitler, was in fact the illegitimate child of a Maria Schicklgruber and bore her surname until she married Georg Hiedler, whereupon Alois assumed his stepfather’s surname, spelled variously Hiedler, Hüttler, Huettler, and, of course, Hitler. The Hitlers were Austrian.

So let’s hop across the border to Germany and then jump over the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and the English Channel to the United Kingdom, where, on the subject of Germans, today would have been Queen Elizabeth II’s 98^th birthday. She was British born and bred, to be sure, the first and as yet only queen of the House of Windsor. But the House of Windsor was the largely German House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha until the Great War, when in 1917, by proclamation of King George V, the UK branch of Haus Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha cleverly super-anglicized its name to seamlessly coincide with that of the family’s old, unquestionably English castle (although it was built by—at least, for—William the Bastard, a Frenchman).

Given that in 1917 the Brits were at war with Germany, whose ruler, Kaiser Wilhelm II was George V’s Cousin Willy, the name change was great for PR. It’s good to be the king. And let’s not go into inbreeding.

Anyway, to celebrate Her Late Majesty’s birthday but certainly not der Führer’s, here’s a video Uncle Izzy made back in 1908 using a rather crude version of his still-experimental analog smartwatch, which accounts for the coarse grain, unsynchronized picture and sound, and lack of color. Izzy, who’s even older than Hitler would be, can’t remember whether he recorded the dress rehearsal at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan when he was visiting the Italian Monterossi branch of the family or at the Palais Garnier when he dropped by the French Montrose branch in Paris.

It’s the beautiful sextet, “Chi mi frena in tal momento?” (“Who’s stopping me now?”), from Gay Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor,” based on Walt Scott’s “The Bride of Lammermoor.” The Monitor’s editorial bored unanimously contends that opera should be heard and not seen for reasons that are obvious to anyone who actually has seen operas. But this scene is the exception, so don’t close your eyes while you listen, lest you miss the guys outhamming one another. The little guy in black, by the way, is Ricky Caruso:

The sextet was used quite a bit outside the opera house. And here’s one instance: