“In 1862, at a dress rehearsal for an opera, dancing superstar Emma Livry wore a costume that evoked the ethereality of the ideal feminine ballerina.
It had a corset bodice and a fluffy skirt that ended around her calves.
But before her entrance, her skirts got too close to a gaslight and her costume caught fire.
Instead of an angelic beauty floating across the stage, Livry became a hellish nightmare cloaked in flames.
She ran around the stage in a column of fire before a fireman was able to put it out.
Livry survived that night and lived another eight grueling months in recovery, only to die of blood poisoning related to the burns.”
– Rae Nudson “On September 12, 1922, the strange infection (from radium exposure) that had plagued Mollie Maggia for less than a year spread to the tissues of her throat.
The disease slowly ate its way through her jugular vein. At 5 p.m. that day, her mouth was flooded with blood as she hemorrhaged so fast that her nurse could not staunch it.
She died at the age of 24.
With her doctors flummoxed as to the cause of death, her death certificate, erroneously, said she’d died of syphilis, something her former company would later use against her.” – Kate Moore
I’ve always been a proponent of Johnathan Cash’s (SUNK COST, BRR) distinctly vicious, concentrated and concise harsh noise work and his latest collaborative project with BLIND DATE as CHEEK BITING set the stage to do a split cassette release on the infamous Italian label NIL BY MOUTH.
‘Commercial’ and gruelling Moscow women’s foot worship, tragic burning and radiation themed.
Vicious moving, cracking HN dynamism and layered seductive source distortion mimics the idea of ‘ideal femininity worship’, flames and the eventual poisoning relevant to the material. – Sam McKinlay / THE RITA
