Comments on: Still in the Bottleneck, or, Chasing for the First Fiasco

By: Stephen Goranson

Stephen Goranson — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 12:44:20 +0000

Another early English use:
SCRAPS FROM THE CORRESPONDENCE OF A MUSICAL DILETTANTE TRAVELLING IN ITALY.,
London Magazine and Review, 2 (1825:June) p.206
Maestro Soliva is the _only_ student belonging to it [the Conservatory of Milan]
that has come before the public. his first opera…was thought to indicate
talent, and gave hopes of improvement, but his second and third operas
_facevano fiasco_, so that out of Lombardy he still remains unknown.

By: Monthly Gleanings : OUPblog

Monthly Gleanings : OUPblog — Wed, 28 May 2008 15:59:56 +0000

[...] substances look rather similar. Hence the allusion to “brains between legs.” As regards Italian fiasco, I am sure that, contrary to a guess of our correspondent, far’ fico and far’ fiasco are [...]

By: Stephen Goranson

Stephen Goranson — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:16:13 +0000

FWIW, a report of the story claiming the origin of “fiasco.”

Illustrated London News Sept 22, 1883, p. 275, Echoes of the Week by G. A. S.
[George Augustus Sala]:
But, touching “fiasco,” D. J. obligingly tells me that there was once at Florence a celebrated harlequin by the name of [Giuseppe-Domenico?] Biancolelli [1640-1688?], whose forte was the improvisation of comic harangues on any object which he might chance to hold in his hand. One evening he appeared on the stage with a flask (“fiasco”) in his hand. but, as ill-luck would have it, he failed in extracting any “funniments” out of the bottle. At last, exasperated, he thus apostrophised the flask: “It is thy fault that I am so stupid to-night. _Fuori_! Get out of this!” So saying, he threw the flask behind him, and shattered it into atoms. Since then, whenever an actor or singer failed to please an audience, they used to say that it was like Biancolelli’s “fiasco.” The explanation is certainly an ingenious one; and possibly some Italian correspondent will favour me with an entirely different version of the origin of the saying.

By: Wander Frota

Wander Frota — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:44:33 +0000

An otherwise reliable source in Brazilian Portuguese (A. Houaiss, 2001) writes that the phrase “far fiasco” is attributed to the Bolognian harlequin D. Biancolelli, who, before 1681, having had a fiasco during his presentation, had one day brought a flask with him onto the stage, thus later blaming the flask for his ill success. Would this be of any help whatsoever?

By: Stephen Goranson

Stephen Goranson — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:06:25 +0000

For what it’s worth, based in part on reading many pre-1854 English uses of “fiasco”–e.g., The Harmonicon, A Journal of Music [London] uses it numerous times from 1823 to 1833–I now doubt that the word came into English via French. It appears to have come directly from Italian, though I haven’t read all the bibliography you’ve gathered, so perhaps you have evidence beyond what’s in the blog.

To turn to what may be another dead end: there was a writer of “indecent” plays, Cornelio Fiasco, mentioned in Wraxall, Nathaniel William, Sir. The history of France, from the accession of Henry the third, to the death of Louis the fourteenth. Preceded by a view of the civil, military, … London, 1795, vol. 2, p. 374.

By: Stephen Goranson

Stephen Goranson — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 11:52:24 +0000

Here’s a suggestion on the origin of the word “poontang” and a question about it. OED doesn’t know the origin and is ambivalent whether it had an African-American origin. I suggest that Spencer Williams (an African-American) might have made up the word, or at least the vulgar sense of it, in his novelty song “Oh! Mister Mitchell.” John O’Hara (who used it in a 1927 letter and Thomas Wolfe (who used it in _O, Lost_) maybe heard the song in NYC and learned the new word. “Mister Mitchell,” I think, turns out to be an odd reference to General William Mitchell, Billy Mitchell, the vigorous proponent of developing US air power and a harsh critic of the military and the government; he was court-marshaled, then resigned, in 1926. The Feb 10 1926 LA Times headline referred to him as “Mister Mitchell.” Feb 2 1926 LA Times headline: “Mitchell in Swan Song: Air Critic Now Plain “Mister.’” One usually abbreviates Mr. but not in these
reports, nor in the song. The other character in the song: Lindy Lou. A reference to Charles Lindbergh and the Spirit of St. Louis? Clara Smith recorded the song in NYC in 1929. But was it written in 1926 or 1927? Anyone know when?

By: Stephen Goranson

Stephen Goranson — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 11:17:23 +0000

Thanks. I don’t know the solution for “fiasco” but can say that it entered English before 1854. Examples:

January 1823, The Harmonicon [London] p.82: “In the letters which he [Rossini] wrote to his mother at Bologna, he was accustomed to draw a smaller or larger figure of a flask, (_fiasco_) at the side of the account of any new opera he had brought out, to indicate the degree of failure which his work had met with. the reader should be apprised that _fare fiasco_ is the Italian cant phrase for a failure.”

May 1827. The Oriental herald and colonial review v. XIII ed. by James Silk
Buckingham p.229 [In Italy at a performance of a the opera Giovanna by Vaccaij]:
“People began to mutter ‘pasticcio,’ a phrase by which they are wont to indicate music made up of odds and ends; and every thing seemed to portend a fiasco, (in musical phraseology, a failure.) A fine duet, however…turned the scale, and put the audience in good humour.”

1841 Cecil: or, The adventures of a coxcomb. A novel. 2nd ed. v.2 p.11 By Mrs. Catherine Grace F. Gore. “I was fain to confess that, with all my tact and cleverness, my season had been
a failure. I had achieved nothing. My advantages had been great, the result–fiasco!”

1841 April The Foreign Quarterly Review p. 118
“… the prying public recognize in a new manoeuvre, anything that has been used
before, they hiss it; the ballet is damned, and in this fiasco all the splendid costumes [etc.]…condemned to vanish….”

The Era (London, England), July 25, 1841; Issue 148. Music and the Drama. “When transplanted to Turin a decided _fiasco_ followed, though the principal_artistes_ were the same.” [Oberto by Verdi creates a _furore_ in one city and
meets with a _fiasco_ in another]