Posted by panch from pool0155.cvx24-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.210.155) on Thursday, September 12, 2002 at 8:34AM :
In Reply to: Swimming Out... posted by panch from pool0155.cvx24-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.210.155) on Thursday, September 12, 2002 at 8:18AM :
You know how maddeningly delicious it is to laugh hysterically and without a prayer of being able to stop...at the wrong moment?
Years ago in Seattle a friend had tickets to the opera...famous up there for its Wagnerian Festival. I'd never been to one...his date declined...so we went. I know Opera is considered to be the grandest form of art...and I dearly love several portions in several operas and have managed to see films of a few. But never before at a live performance.
My friend and a ladyfaire were both in theatre so I'd visited several rehersals and plays while they were in college and later. But nothing is quite like a Wagner opera...those Krauts know how to stun a crowd.
The one we saw that night was of the Ring Cycle in which tall blondes yell at the heavens while the heavens piss on them. There was that most delightful thing of all in Teutonic opera...a chorus of buxom, roly poly beauties in full Wagnerian drag...spears, shields, helmets, long yellow braids, boilerplate boobs.
One scene had a mountain these ladies were to climb all the way to the heavens, singing as they went. Some props and sets can be potentially very dangerous...and this mountain was steep...there must have been slats or steps of some kind, but the illusion was that these dear ladies, about thirty of them, were climbing a wall...straight up!
The music was clanging, the hero was emoting, the heroine was clasping...when the Valkyries, the fat ladies, began their ascent...singing for all they were worth. Somewhere up the mountain one of them lost her footing and lurched forward, jabbing her spear into the butt of Germany, who yelped and fell forward, tripping the lady above her...a few more had to adjust their headgear quickly...some notes were dropped...and my friend and I collapsed in tears of laughter and gales of whoops we could not suppress...we finally had to leave and it was all we could do to stagger up the ailse...what people passing by must have thought when the ornate doors of the opera house were flung open and two louts came howling out, I can't imagine.
Lord it was satisfying...wish I could do it more often.
-- panch
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