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

[Mike Harkin]

As Anna Russell sez, That's the beauty of opera:  You can do _anything_, so long as you SING it!

Mike in Plovdiv

--- On Thu, 7/23/09, Michael Biel <mbiel at mbiel.com> wrote:

> From: Michael Biel <mbiel at mbiel.com>
> Subject: Re: [78-L] Who says opera ain't sexy?
> To: "78-L Mail List" <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
> Date: Thursday, July 23, 2009, 11:01 PM
> 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 
> 
> 
> 
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