Heil Verdi: A N4ked Un Ballo In Maschera Goosestepping On The Ruins Of The World Trade Center. In Mickey Mouse Masks.

With East German subtlety, Un ballo in maschera will be staged in Erfurt, Germany, by director Johann Kresnik in a "different, provocative Masked Ball on the ruins of the World Trade Center".

With a bunch of naked old people in Mickey Mouse masks (see the photo by clicking here: it's obviously Not Safe For Work. Pretty darn ugly, too). WTF Walt?

The staging will premiere tomorrow night. Kresnik stresses: "Apart from the music nothing will remain of Verdi".

Comments

[NHB]

I give opera another 100 years. I won't make the funeral fortunately.

N.

[Les Mitchell]

It is news like this that makes me realize why I have no desire to go to the opera in Europe anymore. These Eurotrash productions have gone from the strange to the downright insane. What is so unfortunate is that many of these garbage productions find their way onto DVD, where people are actually expected to purchase them. I am very careful about purchasing DVD's of European productions. It's not just that they are not traditional - they kill the opera dead!

[Sandy]

Huh.

More "artists" busy giving art a bad name. Poor Verdi--if he wasn't dead, he could sue.

[Countervail]

Who's the dude in the bottom picture?

[Bill Philin-Ploplis]

Those masks don't even fit the people's faces. Very amateurish. Intellectually and artistically lazy.

[Miss Johnson From London]

Don't these "directors" grasp that their impositions aren't avant
but derrière-guarde? The reflexive Marxist undergirding of their
interpretations alone places them slam bang into currents of
thought that were scarcely defensible by the 1930s. These jokers
are OLD FASHIONED. They are today's Académie. Paging revolution, anyone? ¶Lips too pursed in judgment to send smoochies tonight,
I'm afraid, but still loving this site. Miss J from L