One of La Cieca’s pet peeves (and you know she has so many she has to keep them organized with a spreadsheet), well, anyway, one of La Cieca’s pet peeves is that operatic orgies so rarely bear even the vaguest resemblance to orgies in real life. Why, just last week, La Cieca was viewing the Met’s DVD of Tannhäuser, and, my dears, what a snooze! If ever a show needed a jolt of HPG, this is it.

Well, anyway, it does seem that finally La Cieca got her wish. Opera Australia just presented a new production of Tannhäuser by Elke Neidhardt. If photographs are to be trusted, Ms. Neidhardt has attended some of the same orgies La Cieca once graced: