William Tell and Switzerland

I just finished watching the opera "William Tell" by Rossini on DVD. It was the last opera on my bucket list. My mother was a big opera fan, but I never was until they started putting them on tape, and later on DVD. The worst thing about operas is that most of them are way too long, but that's not a problem with DVD because you can watch it in installments and stop it at any point you want. I don't know how familiar you guys are with the William Tell legend, but Wiki has a good write up on it if you're interested. The production I just saw was disappointing in that it was set in modern times and they took liberties with the story line, which is common practice in modern opera productions. They didn't even play any of the overture music during the main performance. Nevertheless, I'm glad I got to see it before I died. "William Tell" is seldom performed and I've been looking for a DVD of it for decades. (Okay, I'll tell you this much: William Tell is the Swiss hero who shot an apple off his son's head in 1307, and the finale of Rossini's "William Tell Overture" later became the theme for "The Lone Ranger".)

I've been a big fan of Switzerland since my brief visit to that country at the age of 16. I asked one of our tour guides how the Swiss have been able to maintain their independence and neutrality for so long. She told me that there is nothing in Switzerland an invader would want that would be worth the effort needed to overcome the determination of the Swiss people. Later I found out that every adult male in Switzerland is a member of their national guard. They get about six month's training and then are sent home with a military rifle and all the personal gear they would be carrying if they went into combat. They keep this stuff in their homes, and regular inspections are conducted to make sure they still have it and are keeping it in working order. In the event of an invasion, each man is expected to fight right from his front door. Switzerland has not sent an armed force out of the country since 1848, and nobody has tried to invade them since 1815, after they helped defeat Napoleon's forces by refusing to fight alongside their French overlords against Russia and Austria.

Switzerland is a small country, maybe nine million people, but it is not unlike the United States in its ethnic diversity. The country speaks four official languages, French, German, Italian, and Romansh, which is an archaic language unique to Switzerland. The country is divided into I forget how many cantons which are kind of like our counties. Each of these cantons was once a sovereign state, and they formed a confederation in the 1600s. That confederation was overthrown by French forces in 1798, and the Swiss state was reconstituted as a federal republic in 1815, borrowing some ideas, like the bi-cameral legislature, from the United States. Maybe we will never be like Switzerland when we grow up, but we would be well advised to take a page or two out of their book, as they have from ours.

In the original story, William Tell shot the apple off his son's head with a crossbow because Gessler, the mean governor from Austria, threatened to kill them both if he didn't. Tell later escaped and used the same crossbow to assassinate Gessler and set his people free, with a little help from his friends. The crossbow was a state of the art military weapon in those days and Tell, a civilian, was proficient in its use.

Michigan allows the use of the crossbow to hunt deer during the archery season, but they didn't used to. It was banned for a long time because it was silent and could be shot out of a car window, making it a perfect violator's weapon. I think the reason it was legalized a few years ago was to get more people interested in hunting, and to sell more expensive gear to the people who were already hunters. Be that as it may, our archery deer season opened on October 1, and the regular firearms deer season opens on November 15.