Armida

Well last night was my first taste of Registeater. Sensationalist director Calixto Bieito directed this very special production of Gluck's opera Armida.

The Komische Oper looks like a box from the outside. Inside it's really pretty. I went with John and Erica.

Before the opera started, wondering what to expect

It's all supposed to be a woman's fantasy dream. Armida is a sorceress whose charms never fail to win over many a man, except for that one pesky dude that is simply too focussed on his job, the soldier Rinaldo. So she sets about in revenge to shoot the bastard but then she just can't do it (only in this production.... she does... and he falls down dead... and then he randomly gets up and goes "ta da!!!" and walks offstage.... WTF?? Maybe it was a dream?)

So then she keeps him (alive it seems) in her palace with all her man-slaves and dominatrix companions until one day she has a meeting (at the Underworld) and has to leave him for a bit.

While she's gone Rinaldo's mates come to collect him from Armida's grasp, and he sees them and goes "oh yeah, shit I should get back to work" and despite all her measures he leaves, so she sets about making her dwelling into a miserable desert. Or something like that.

So this director did a production of Mozart's die Enfuehrung aus dem Serail in 2004 that shocked the hell out of everyone. Apparently lots of writhing in blood and prostitutes and heads on platters and other stuff. Because I had heard word of mouth about that production, I had assumed this "new wave" of theatre in Europe was kind of a general BDSM trend. Well actually, it was just the same director that did this production as well. And lo and behold, there's writhing in blood, man-slaves, etc etc etc (more on that below)

I was looking forward to hearing Maria Bengtsson who in all the publicity videos looks like a strong and convincing singer. Instead we got Caroline Melzer. She looked and sounded about 20 years old, skinny as a twig with very little substance in voice nor much character for such a powerful heroine role. Maybe it's just the wrong role for her? She sounded like a student, the tessitura was too high and she had to resort to lots of twig-thin singing just to get through the role. In fact when she first opened her mouth I thought "Oh God she's not going to make it through the night". Unfortunately, her character held very little power, command or sex-appeal either (or desire?) and seemed completely out of place in a room full of naked men..... I wondered at the time if she was a young artist making her debut or something. Hey, that'll be me one day. (not in a room full of naked men... well maybe)

Me in a room full of naked men

 Just kidding mum!

By all other accounts the other voices I thought were pretty good. 

So here's a rundown of what the "woman's fantasy scena" entailed:


Shoe fetish (power dressed woman in heels walks over backs of naked men all lined up on their hands and knees)
Dodgy Las Vegas style pseudo-erotic act with a man wearing zebra striped budgie smugglers and a 6ft snake wrapped around his body
Onstage abortion (while singing an aria)
Lots of oral sex (including cunnilingus while hanging off and swinging from space age pods Kubrick style)
Lesbian sex
Gay sex
Hetero sex, woman on top front centre stage
Orgies
Old, young, fat, thin

Cross dressing (gynandrophormophilia)
Implied lactaphilia
Human sacrifice with eyeball gouging
Autogynephilia
Chronophilia
Dendrophilia (haha! In a spiritual sense... he was singing about a tree, anyway while simultaneously bringing Armida to orgasm)
Strangling (erotophonophilia)
Implied necrophilia
Stigmatophilia...
Troilism (watching others)


Anyway if the production had have been exciting, convincing, dynamic, the singing good, the acting powerful, perhaps it wouldn't have looked so much like a freak show with a superfluous plot thrown in. But they all just looked kind of tired and over it, going through the motions. It kept making me think, how bloody awful would it be to be on stage giving simulated oral sex to the same bird while swinging from a space pod, night after night for six months. You'd just be soooooo over it.

 The space pod

Hmmm... am wondering if my blog will get shut down if I show nudity?


Another Language Swap Party

After the opera I went to Postdamer Platz to the Cinestar Bar to meet an expat crew for a party. Met some nice people, had some good German conversation practice, learnt some valuable words. It's good to formulate exactly how to talk about the opera I had just been to see. There's vocabulary involved that I barely know in English. Discovered on my way home that catching U-bahns after midnight when they run at intervals of 15 minutes is not fun if you have to change 3 times. Should have ridden my bike.

Chocolate Review

Since there is a chocolate aisle at the supermarket I frequent (next to the lollies aisle which is next to the cookies aisle which is next to the cake aisle)  I will be busy for the next 6 years reviewing all sorts of chocolate.

I found Chocolate infused with Apple Cinnamon and Chocolate infused with sea salt. My first impression was "Sea Salt has no place inside a chocolate bar!". I still think I'm right. These bars looked pretty, but were deceiving. The apple cinnamon was sickly sweet and the sea salt was just... weird. And wrong.









Dinner Club meetup tonight at a Brazilian restaurant. Maybe Potsdam tomorrow if the weather is good. Today it is pretty dismal and I don't really feel like leaving the apartment. Bring on the German DVDs!

Fleen