Whenever Opera Chic is accidentally subjected to the grim, soulsucking humorlessness of the music of some crazily overrated 20th century composers (you know who they are, but after dealing in the same month with angry Harnoncourt fans and Scala lawyers carrying cease-and-desist e-mail, OC is not telling just now), music so deadening that is actually being used right now to interrogate prisoners in remote CIA prisons whenever waterboarding does not work (or so she heard on Al Jazeera, but Opera Chic's Arabic is far from A+), then Opera Chic thinks of how funny, smart, crazily intelligent and just spot-on Mauricio Kagel can be. And everything's good in the world again.
Those French cool kids down at the Festival Agorà have chosen maestro Kagel to liven up their operations with his Exotica. He spake to Libération about how
La question de la mémoire musicale m'a occupé toute ma vie
and many other cool, things. The entire story is here.
