Victor Borge 原名Borge Rosenbaum,出生于1909年的丹麦哥本哈根(Copenhagen,Denmark),一个犹太音乐世家。父亲是丹麦皇家乐团的小提琴手,母亲则是钢琴家。家庭的熏陶下,Victor Borge 两岁学钢琴,8岁进行首场个人钢琴独奏会(first piano recital),不到10岁以少年天才身份进入丹麦皇家音乐学院(Danish Royal Academy of Music).二战初期,Borge逃往美国并留了下来,开始了他把喜剧加入古典音乐的表演生涯。2000年的12月,病逝于美国Greenwich,Connecticut,享年91岁。
Victor Borge的成就
Victor Borge被美国The Washington Post评为“生活在地球上最有趣的钢琴家”(The funniest pianist on Earth).他在每次的古典钢琴巡回演出中,总会加一些俏皮话(quips), 诙谐的双关语(wordplay)和自我嘲讽(pratfalls),独具匠心,别具一格,征服了全世界的观众,历久不衰。以下是Borge的经典之作:
vComedy in Music-1953-56年期间,在Broadway举行了849场演出。
vPhonetic punctuation(Borge自己原创的“口语化标点”)
vInflationary Language(比如把tomorrow改成treemorrow, what for?说成what five?,etc.)
vDance of The Comedians (Borge当指挥,故意自造假象,让整个乐团”不知所措“)
.....
Victor Borge的作品远远不止这些,由于篇幅关系,我就不一一列举了。
Borge语录:
ØI don't mind growing old. I'm just not used to it.
ØLaughter is the shortest distance between two people。
ØOccasionally, a finger comes up to wipe a tear [of laughter] from the eye... and that's my reward... the rest goes to the government.
ØThe difference between a violin and a viola is that a viola burns longer.
ØWhen you go home, please drive home extremely carefully. Extremely carefully. Because I walk in my sleep!
ØOne afternoon, when I was four years old, my father came home, and he found me in the living room in front of a roaring fire, which made him very angry. Because we didn't have a fireplace。
Ø[After making a usage, grammar error, etc.] Hey, it's your language; I'm just trying to use it."
ØI'm Lou Borg.
ØHumor is something that thrives between man's aspirations and his limitations. There is more logic in humor than in anything else. Because, you see, humor is truth.
ØAfter I was knighted five times, I became a weekend.
木兄, Good question! But, I do not have any idea about this one. After going through all the related links,I found Lou Borg belongs to nobody.So as my guess,Victor Borge just opened his show in a special way,since everyone knows he is Victor Borge,not somehow Lou Borg.
BTW,One of Joe Wang's well-known quotes: I am Irish,now you could understand where it is from.
Not happy about my answer? Sorry,it is beyond my knowledge of American culture,go ask your collegue Monday morning,hope you could have one,and,don't forget to come back and tell me.