Tea at Trianon: Inside Stanley Tucci

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, December 16, 2024

Inside Stanley Tucci

From The Washington Examiner:

If the daily cycles of pasta and marinara sauce and savory pastries and orecchiette with sausage and broccoli leave a lasting impact on his audience, it might be motivation to actually cook. And to cook often enough to develop an intuition for it. In the Tucci household, meals often start with leftover vegetables or frozen sauces but may evolve into something beautiful.
The results are not uniform, to be fair. Tucci and his wife seem nearly distraught when they make scallops with a skillet too cool to properly sear. He berates himself for inadequately pureeing vegetables in his soup. His reviews of disappointing restaurants are even more scathing, dripping with resentment at money (and, more importantly, time) wasted. Even then, his sense of propriety imposes restraint. Restaurants and chefs he loves are praised, loudly and by name. Subpar establishments are brutalized, but without proper nouns and with descriptions too vague to Google or cancel.

Despite the breezy tone of pasta lunches and celebrity dinner parties, Tucci’s restless inner monologue never permits the weeks to turn glib. As with Marcus Aurelius, a Roman long before the time of pasta, human mortality weighs heavily on Tucci. Living in London, he can estimate the number of times he will see American friends again before they pass. He is 64 but has young children. He is building a life in England with his wife of 12 years, but he can never fully escape his New York home where he raised a family and where cancer claimed the life of his first wife. He won his own battle with cancer, although it left him with deprived saliva production that limits his ability to enjoy rich meats. (Read more.)