Haines His Way

*Just keep in mind, they prefer that people only leave the audtion room - well, ballroom - between each group of 25 auditionees.  So, you'll be "stuck" in there for at least 45-50 minutes.  

...and my jeans had wet spots where I'd accidentally...

A shame, Jesus should be gold or silver.

-- hey, you can be on my Cave Babe TV show -- enacting all the ways to use a tent...

I used to camp with my parents and have done it once or twice as an adult...

- Merlin is my helper in the battle.

Will we never get to page six?

Partial nudity and simulated sex distract from wagner masterpiece
By John Farrell, Special to the Press-Telegram

WAGNER NEVER quite finished with his opera "Tannhauser."

It exists in several versions, and he was planning to return to it again, to perfect it, shortly before his death.

There are many who believe that it didn't need fixing. It begins with one of the composer's most celebrated, and powerful, overtures, and the philosophical terrain it explores - the clash between profane and pure love - was to become Wagner's central theme through almost all his operas.

That clash can hardly ever have been more profoundly, and more shockingly, expressed than in the new version of "Tannhauser" that opened Saturday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. It is the company's first production of the opera.

Sex - profane love if you are writing a textbook - has always been a part of opera, its driving dramatic force. It was expressed figuratively in early operas and more forthrightly in later ones. Now, in the 21st century, seeing the sex act itself on stage is hardly a surprise.

As audiences have become more adult, directors have decided to get their lovers into bed, naked and in compromising positions, more and more often. (It must be admitted, though, that there is still some squeamishness. It is only the young, slim and physically alluring who undress. The opera world is still not ready for sex between mature, and heavier, stars.)

Los Angeles Opera's "Tannhauser" is what is called the Paris version, where the overture is blended into the first act and there is a longer, originally balletic, bacchanal. Parisian audiences insisted on this. Those who prefer the wonderful original overture may object, but the idea works dramatically.

Instead of dance, though, director Ian Judge has decided to create, unambiguously, the sexual frenzy that Wagner's music implies. The stage, lit bright red, features Venus (Lioba Braun) and Tannhauser (Peter Seiffert) and about two dozen dancers, the men in red tailcoats, the women in red ball gowns.

Before long a lot of undressing starts and everyone, except Venus and Tannhauser, is naked (save for G-strings and discreetly hidden red shorts), with couples locked in athletic sexual positions. Male-on-male sex was also part of the eight to 10 acts of coupling proceeding all at once. The only persons who heard Venus' singing in the scene were listening with their eyes closed.

...

You mean the Mouth That Roared:



der Brucer