Only in Berlin: Second & Third Base for Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito

We're just gonna let this one speak for itself! Titus im Bode-Museum Berlin's new production of Mozart's La Clemenza opens on October 29. More photos here, various cast here in Christoph Hagel's production.

el oh el!

Click for more photos of men and women doing things!

Comments

[judith klein]

but how is the singing?

[Les Mitchell]

They seem to be enjoying themselves.

[Constantine A. Papas]

It looks like an asylum that let the inmates loose!

[walter]

Well, it IS getting to the core of "Tito", for sure!
Seeing as there are no real singers to listen to anymore, at least there is something to watch!

[Bill Philin-Ploplis]

Yikes! Male bewbs dripping out of a corset!

[Barbara]

I confess I am strangely attracted to the idea of pornographic opera.

[nordicwalker]

Don't tell me the people in those pictures are actually going to sing....!

[Lisa]

Um, is that a microphone taped on the cheek of that woman...?

[Rogier]

Oh come on!

[Brent]

Of course the germans!

Barbara, nothing strange about being attracted to pornographic opera. It's not as appealing for traditional reasons, but there's room for both in this world.

Nothing wrong with indulging the carnal side.

I may go see this even if it required ear plugs. ;-)

[Frank]

Sick. Eurotrash again!

[alexander]

I agree with Frank. This is a typical trash...When you don't have anything worthy to say to the audience you have to appeal to the carnal side of your nature to attract hard-core cash for your surviving;)
The most cheap and simple way of doing it is prostitution.
The Art is out of these "attempts" and can appeal to public without them. Opera is about music and voices, a bit higher than just naked a$$e$. Probably these people have some problems with their sexuality if they try to exposed their (not every time perfect) parts of body to many other's eyes... Not much laugh about this;)

[Oroveso]

I love flesh & sex as much or more than the next guy. This, however, just looks like sensationalistic c^*p superimposed over LA CLEMENZA DI TITO because the regisseur doesn't trust Mozart, the music or the audience. From a musical standpoint I'm still trying to get my mind's ear around the glorious 'Parto! Parto!' being sung by a countertenor. Modern Countertenor does not = 18th century castrato.

[Bill Grant]

Last year's SALOME at the Met was as close as I have ever seen porn in the opera. Of course, I saw it in the direct transmission from NYC in a theatre here in California. It was right in your face. Some old folks got up and walked out.

[Nullifidian]

Oroveso:

From a musical standpoint I'm still trying to get my mind's ear around the glorious 'Parto! Parto!' being sung by a countertenor. Modern Countertenor does not = 18th century castrato.

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around how you could have heard "Parto! Parto!" sung by a castrato. If you haven't, as I highly suspect, since being a castrato these days is considered to come at an unacceptably high human cost, then why the caviling at the role being played by a countertenor, rather than a mezzo in a toga? Are mezzo-sopranos somehow closer to the castrato 'ideal'?

[violinhunter]

Purple and white - my favorite combination. I would not pay to see this garbage, even if the music is rather good.

[Oroveso]

@ Nullifidian: Yes, I believe mezzos or sopranos are somehow closer to the castrato sound --- at least to my ears. Moreschi (the only extant recorded evidence of a castrato, albeit not one of the great ones) sounds nothing like a counter-tenor --- again at least to my ears, even though 'Parto, Parto' is not one of his recorded selections. He did record Mozart's 'Ave Verum' where you can faintly hear him above the boys.

[Nullifidian]

I have had many bad nights at the opera, but I can hardly think of a worse one than having someone who sounds exactly like Alessandro Moreschi singing all evening. To say that he was not one of the great ones is a remarkable feat of understatement.

The problem with using Moreschi as a model, aside from the fact that he was a terrible singer, is that his singing was almost entirely done in the church. Though there are instances of his trying on certain arias during recitals, he never sang a full opera in his life. Mercifully, the craze for operatic countertenors had diminished by his day.

So to judge what an operatic castrato would have sounded like, however unsatisfactory this must be, we have to go back to the written accounts, and one thing most of them are unanimous on is that castrati did not sing or sound like women.

So what I wonder is, if we're going to accept the inauthenticity of not having a castrato, why prefer one version of inauthentic over another? The only genuine aesthetic justification could be that a well-trained mezzo may be more capable of the flourishes and ornaments Mozart has written than a male countertenor (since most of them are just versatile falsettists). But that judgment has to be made on a case-by-case basis. There are many women who wouldn't be up to the complexity of singing Sesto, and some countertenors who would be, like Philippe Jaroussky. I don't know the singer in this production, but I hardly think there's a reason to assume that he's automatically incapable just because of his vocal type.