Tragedy and Tragicomedy

Today we went to see Rigoletto at the Kennedy Center. When a story ends with a guy standing over the body of his daughter - who is dead as an unintended result of a chain of events he set in motion - and crying out "Ah, the curse!" that's tragedy. The final stage direction in the libretto is, "Tearing his hair in anguish, he falls senseless upon his daughter's body." Wow.

But happily in real life one often encounters situations with elements of tragedy but which are also amusing in some way. Here are some excerpts I translated from a message Lorina received from an old classmate from her school days in Moldova (they reconnected - where else - on odnoklassniki.ru, the Russophone world's answer to MySpace and Classmates.com (I would say Facebook, but vkontakte is the true Russophone Facebook clone)) - she had asked about a mutual friend of theirs:

Hi. I'm glad you remembered me. I live in Kiev now. I've been married four times. I don't know where [N**] is, but his parents told me he's living in Moscow, he married a Muscovite, they showed me pictures of her. [N**] probably wanted to get Moscow registration papers and that's why he got married there. When I saw the pictures of his wife they freaked me out - she's ugly. I didn't think [N**] would have such an ugly wife. I thought he would marry a model. My second wife was a model, the third one was Greek, but I got deported from Greece. Now I live in Ukraine. [...]

I didn't think that you would leave for America. I visited Los Angeles, and I didn't like it there. Americans are crafty bastards and mean [хитрожопые и злые]. In American movies they're awesome, but in real life they're idiots. [...]