aristocratic

Married to Stanley, a man of carnal appetites and vulgar manners, Stella has embraced the crude pleasures of realism, while her freeloading sister still clings to tattered aristocratic illusions.

Although a middle class already existed throughout most of Europe by that time, in the form of urban bourgeoisie or yeoman-farmers or some other grouping, the concept gained special significance in a new country whose Constitution eliminated the aristocratic privileges enjoyed by European nobility.

Both opera and play distill class warfare down to the aristocratic household, where two just-married servants foil the lecherous count’s scheme to exercise jus primae noctis — right of the first night — on the wife.

And it’s an incredible set piece because what you realize is even though the French have won and the Germans are going to lose, their aristocratic cadre is losing its grasp on Europe, and they are going to be cast aside, all of them, regardless of nationality, and the time has passed them by.

Leadership values change, but being placed under permanent house arrest by the Bolsheviks at the luxury Hotel Metropol in “A Gentleman in Moscow” doesn’t stop Alexander from dressing the aristocratic part.