Today, 13:16
Authors:
Jānis Torgans (musicologist)
do you know
In the Latvian Radio 3 cycle “Did you know?” cultural researchers, historians and other experts explain many different terms, tell about interesting artifacts and unusual ideas.
“The city’s electric railway, built in underground tunnels or sometimes above ground – on flyovers, rarely in a specially separated part of the streets” – this is the definition of the word “metropolitan”. The underground railway in New York is one of the oldest in the world. But it’s called “New York City Subway.” Literally, it would come out as underground road, sub-road, sub-road.
On the other hand, the name of the famous opera house “New York Metropolitan Opera” is derived from an ancient Greek first word, a compound made up of “mētēr” – mother and “polis” – city.
It should be noted that this “polis” is also the basis of the Latvian word “polisa”, which mainly refers to ancient city-states, whose modern analogue would be, for example, Monaco, the Vatican or Singapore. And, yes, also the word “polise” – a document / certificate – and “police”, which come to the present day indirectly from the medieval Latin “politia” – with the meaning “state system”. And even further derivatives – like “politics” with a whole fan of meanings…
Let’s not get lost in the language underground and return to the Metropolitan Opera of New York.
So, “metropolis” nowadays is usually understood as a big city, main, leading, central – not exactly a capital, with national status.
Therefore, our beloved opera in New York is simply the first, largest, leading and leading opera – in fact, in the entire region or even the continent.
It is interesting that the second largest New York opera house is called the New York City Opera (“New York City Opera”), because it was necessary to separate the names of the two main New York opera houses (in 2013, the City Opera went bankrupt, but in 2016 it got back on its feet).
New York’s grand museum of fine arts is also “Metropolitan Museum of Art” in the same Latvian as Metropoles, not the comical Metropolitan Museum.
Also, taken separately, the first part of the compound “metropole” “mother” – mother – has experienced great changes over time. For example, the word “metrdotels”. Now we simplify it and even lower it, calling it the manager of the hall. The dictionary of foreign words provides a slightly more subtle explanation – the main waiter in a restaurant, hotel. But the French first name means the owner of a house, dwelling, place of residence, master.
In essence, it is really both an owner, a landlord, and a manager (manager, keeper of order). The name of the mother has already completely spread here. However, as Mikhail Bakhtin once nicely explained, the genre lives in the present, but always remembers its past. Origin, research, biography. This applies not only to the genre, but also to the name. Also for us, when looking for the meaning of a designation, name, title, it is best to turn to its origin. Then we will easily distinguish metropolitan from metropolis.
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2023-12-08 11:18:01
#subway #York
