Headshot of La Cieca

Cher Public

  • armerjacquino: Oh, that's the wrong one, isn't it? Hang on.
  • Indiana Loiterer III: September 24 – Elisir 26 – Turandot September 27 – L’El...
  • oedipe: Let's not be reductionist ourselves: I don't believe the art...
  • armerjacquino: http://parterre.com/2011/08/08/rip-brad-wilbers-met-futures-...
  • grimoaldo: Has anybody posted the classical Grammy winners?Engineer...
  • almavivante: When I read an inspired extravaganza like DharmaBay's, I rea...
  • OpinionatedNeophyte: Is this the same Laquita Mitchell? Is she ready for prime ti...
  • Betsy_Ann_Bobolink: An interesting sidebar is that to be historically "accurate"...
  • grimoaldo: Yeah, I missed both of those too. Very good, very funny, con...
  • CruzSF: Congrats to DharmaBay and iltenoredigrazia. I don't know HOW...

blog advertising is good for you

starkers scheite schichtet mir dort

Need you ask who discusses the subject of nudity in opera (among other performing arts) in today’s Times?

[W]hen nudity seems called for and natural, it can lend disarming humanity to a drama.

There was, for example, Richard Greenberg’s “Take Me Out,” at the Public Theater in 2002, about a superstar baseball player who reveals that he is gay. The play could not have explored how the interpersonal dynamics of baseball’s locker-room culture are shaken by the star’s announcement without showing the players in the clubhouse showers.

. . . . Already in previews at the Broadhurst Theater on Broadway is Peter Shaffer’s “Equus,” a new production from London of the 1973 play. Naturally, fans of the young Daniel Radcliffe will be enticed by the chance to see him, our adorable Harry Potter, in the buff.

La Cieca kids, of course, because Tony Tommasini would never stoop to conscious lasciviousness. In fact, in the current screed, our scribe remains relentlessly high-minded in his rehashing of 1960s cliches about how “when nudity seems called for and natural, it can lend disarming humanity to a drama.”

Your doyenne should add here that, though she’s no Biblical scholar, she is shocked that Mr. Tommasini should be laboring under the misapprehension that the Gospels of  Mark and Matthew are part of the Old Testament.

58 comments

  • Josephine says:

    It would be absolutely natural and called for to see Mr. Gunn or Mr. Keenlyside nude onstage.

    As for Mr. Tommasini, he must remain clothed even when he is taking showers at home alone .

  • Kundry's Therapist says:

    Random question – on CAMI’s website there’s an Angela Maria Blasi working with Matthew Epstein. Is that the soprano Angela Maria Blasi, or just a bizarre coincidence?

  • il lacerato spirito says:

    Josephine, you are a hoot, and right on the mark….Have mental pic of Tomassini in the shower in his winter coat lol

  • Rinaldo says:

    Kundry’s T: It’s the same Angela Maria Blasi.

  • Kundry's Therapist says:

    So what happened with Ms Blasi’s singing?

  • Rinaldo says:

    She’s definitely still singing. For instance, she joins the Vienna Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in February, for Marx songs with orchestra.

  • kashania says:

    Was I the only one expecting nude pictures of Mark adn Matthew when clicking on the hyperlinks?

  • Kundry's Therapist says:

    Curious – maybe Ms Blasi wants to see how the other half live (or what her rivals are doing)…

  • Blasi, what an un(der)sung heroine: her Musetta on the Conlon soundtrack for the Boheme film steals the show (and she looked pretty good, too). Likewise her role in some Mahler 8 or other, I forget which now.

  • Henry Holland says:

    As for Mr. Tommasini, he must remain clothed even when he is taking showers at home alone

    That would be a shame, I think he’s quite sexy. I wouldn’t mind him doing a nude scene for me.

    Maria Ewing did the full on naked thing when she sang Salome here in Los Angeles. It was definitely a case of “Well, I can’t sing the role, so I’m going to distract you with my bush”. In San Francisco, I’ve never seen so many binoculars snap to attention as when whoever the opera had dancing Tadzio appeared at the lip of the stage to begin the Games of Apollo in Britten’s opera.