Pop goes the peplum!
Well, all La Cieca can think is that the New York City Opera has just plain decided to win your doyenne over, because otherwise how can you explain why the company would present an art installation that combines her two very favorite things in the entire universe, i.e., couture and explosions?
The installation, part of the “exploding couture” series by E.V. Day, will adorn the Promenade of the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center with “dynamic sculptures made from a selection of vintage City Opera costumes and costume accessories… dramatically suspended overhead in exuberant simulated motion.”
I mean, it’s like they are reading my mind.
This exhibition will definitely rank as a must-see even if it is one-tenth as, ahem, exuberant as the artist’s description of her work:
I want the sculptures to channel and release the energy that flows into these garments from the characters who wear them. I want to fill the space with the lyricism and bravura of opera, and show off the fascinating architecture of panniers, bustles, crinolines and codpieces.
The only thing more mad! mad! mad! that La Cieca can imagine would be to hear that previous blockquote read aloud in George Steel‘s dulcet tones, but probably it’s just as well he didn’t say it because she would probably just keel over with delight.
Mrs. Vreeland is smiling somewhere. La Cieca just knows it.
I’m all in favor of exploring the fascinating architecture of codpieces!
I’m all in favor of exploring the fascinating architecture of codpieces!
Me too. I’m calling dibs on the following cod pieces:
1. Marius
2. Nathan Gunn
3.
Nicolas Courjal
Years ago I was involved with a production of As You Like It which was being done with codpieces, the kind that tie onto the tights by little ribbons in their upper corners. One of the better endowed actors walked into the greenroom and one wag exclaimed, “Oooooh look–giftwrapped!”
Look on the bright side. At least it’s about opera — and every rather opera-queeny, at that.
One of the more memorable lines from a British critic came from Rodney Milnes describing the cod pieces worn in Royal Opera’s Die Meistersinger as, “A triumph of optimism over reasonable expectation”.
Mr Courjal’s agent certainly knows how to craft a biography:
Born in France, he first studies at the Conservatoire in Rennes and then in Paris with Jane Berbié at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique. He takes part in Master classes by P. von Shilwasky and by Christa Ludwig.
…
Nicolas COURJAL already did recitals like in Paris Orsay, 1998, in Strasbourg and in Germany where he belongs notably to the company of the Mannheim Theatre and he sings also in Heidelberg.