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.
Nothing new. We had David Freeman’s Opera Factory folk flapping their tired old bits about for years.
Mind you, I have a friend who remembers nothing but the privates on parade in any show he goes to see. ‘Bent’, for him, was always about the well-hung young man who crossed the stage within the first few minutes.
I only ever found nudity on stage sensual once – in the Maly Theatre production of Chekhov’s Platonov, where there was a late-night nude-bathing scene in the ‘river’ which dominated the stage. What works on film rarely does in the cold light of theatre.
See also Mark 14:51-2:
51 And there followed him a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body; and the young men laid hold on him: 52 And he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked.
The young man in question is traditionally identified with Mark, the author of the gospel. (I’m not sure whether the “young men” are the apostles or the arresting mob.)
Regards,
Helen
There was a nude scene in The Handmaid’s Tale, and it was both rather shocking and strangely beautiful. Offred was astride Nick, humping him, without her top on while singing a complicated aria. I just thought to myself the whole time, man! that chick is naked AND singing!
I think Blasi recorded the Mahler 8 in Munich with Colin Davis, for BMG, which is on SACD. I know she recorded the Brahms requiem with him–and possibly Mozart as well.
I could do a nude scene *tomnorrow*- it’s a question of lighting and scrims…
re n. 11:
used to be you couldnt even audition for Opera Factory unless you were prepared to agree to and accept the compulsory nudity clause in the contract. It was done and “shown” as a matter of course. On occasion David Freeman would even ask you to undress AT the actual audition… From personal experience… AANND… that well over 20 yrs ago! LOL…
I dont really know WHAT *tom-norrow* might be, but if it is “a question of lighting and scrims…” then it could be ANYTHING!
As for nude scenes I did my very first in L. Berio’s “Un Re in Ascolto” at the ROH circa 1989!!
Oyvehy…
Maybe TT was confusing Mark and Matt with Moses and (A)Aron, and he thought how natural and called for copious nudity would be in the Golden Calf scene.
Or he thought of Samson. Samson / Salome – close enough.
Scaramuccio and Tubsinger: The Mahler 8th with Blasi is actually the Sinopoli on DG. (Paired with Studer, with Jo as Mater Gloriosa.) The RCA Colin Davis has Marc, Sweet, and Norberg-Schulz as its 3 sopranos.
Just to close out that little sidebar….
I’m still trying to think of a Brunnhilde I’d care to see naked…maybe Dame Gwyneth back in the Boulez Ring? Of the Brunnhildes I’ve seen…Schnaut, Zschau, Behrens and Eaglen (and…I think I’m missing one, hmmm), I think I’d prefer just to take Siegfried’s word for it.