[78-L] Who says opera ain't sexy?

[Michael Biel]

From: David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca>
> Check out these covers, all you dirty old men out there 
>(and you know who you are).
> http://www.allegro-music.com/opd/index_zzz.asp#grandtier
> (I just read them for the articles.)
> Who says opera ain't sexy?   dl

I never said opera wasn't sexy, and these covers are nothing.  First of
all there's Salome, and in most productions in the past ten years
there's nothing under the seventh veil when it drops. 

But even that is nothing.  In January 2001 I was visiting London,
England and was setting up a VCR timer for a game show for Leah when I
turned over to the BBC where they had just started telecasting a live
performance of Rigoletto from the Royal Opera Company at 7 P.M. on an
early Saturday evening.  There is a court party going on and some of the
ladies are topless.  Then some of the guys start passing around one of
the ladies and remove ALL of her clothes.  Then they pass her over to
one of the guys who has a similar lack of clothes.  As the two of them
writhe around, in comes the Duke singing about how fickle women are.  He
was only one letter off.  Later on we discover what is going on when the
soprano hits the high notes in the Quartette.  

Needless to say, Leah's game show did not get recorded because I was
recording the higher art of opera instead.  I checked all the TV
listings for this telecast and there were no notices that this was
anything but a cultural event for the whole family.  I am sure that all
over England, parents sat their reluctant kiddies down in front of the
telly for a spot of culture, and instantly transformed an entire
generation of spiked hair punks into opera fanatics. 

Just before it ended I went down to the Covent Garden where this
performance was taking place (my hotel was only a mile away) and there
were many happy families exiting at the end of the opera, and no
warnings posted there either.  Come to think of it, there were no
warnings posted at the Met when Leah and I went to see Salome last year,
but this time there was advance publicity and we KNEW what we were going
for.  None of the reviews of the performance or telecast of Rigoletto
mentioned the costumes, or lack thereof although that was a major
subject in the reviews and previews of Salome in NYC.

And yes, the Royal Opera Rigoletto is available on DVD.  I had gotten
the Region 2 PAL a few years ago, but it has just come out in the U.S.
Region 1 NTSC.  

http://www.amazon.com/Verdi-Rigoletto-David-McVicar-Royal/dp/B001URA638/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1248412610&sr=8-1

You might want to read the reviews and descriptions of the British
edition.  
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000062Y6L/ref=cm_rdp_product

The Salome performance we saw at the Met isn't on DVD yet but I think it
is on the Met's web site, but the cameras were not on Salome at the end
-- they purposefully did this to keep the HiDef live simulcasts a family
affair.  But there is an earlier unexpurgated performance of the same
Salome, Karita Mattila, on YouTube but you see her butt on it--we saw
her other side at the Met.  I also recommend the unexpurgated DVD and
the YouTube of Maria Ewing's performance.  

So I still am wondering who you think said opera ain't sexy.

Mike (anybody ever see Clara's Butt?) Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com