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The news is blank as usual, but Magritte is very much present.
The production of Poulenc's first opera, LES MAMELLES DES TIRESIAS, (the TITS of TIRESIAS) was commisioned by the Opera Theater of St. Louis in 1983 as a companion work with Delius' Margot La Rouge. The work remains one of the most fanciful and entertaining of the Corsaro and Chase collaborations, and was revived for the Juillard Opera Theater in 1994, playing with a late Poulenc, LA VOIX HUMAIN. This production is being discussed as a possible revival for the New York City Opera as well.
Therese, the wife, on her illuminated soapbox.
The husband delivers his lecture on Eden.
The production was set in a white set, with black and white costumes of the period (1916-20) and contained many bright moments, most notably,a finale with white balloons cascading onto the audience from the rear of the house, creating the atmosphere of a giant party.
The rocking-horse gun and Napoleon complexes.
Chorus line of Paris monuments, with house from Zazibar attached from the rear.
The opera is in a surrealist vein, the story of a wife who exchanges places with her husband. Her idea is to lead armies, his is to create babies for his factory. The scenes are zany and bizarre and tumble from the delightful score in a frenzy.
NEW YORK TIMES
This production sets just the right tone for its wonderful piece of music. Funny in an unpredictable, indirect, polite way, with things slightly askew as they are in a Monsieur Hulot movie. After the disgruntled housewife Therese lets her balloon breasts fly off in a quick sex transformation, we meet the Husband. The choreography and skillful movements of the chorus were created by its designer, Ronald Chase.
The props for Mamelles were complex and playful.
LONDON TIMES
Mamelles subject matter is sexuality and parenthood and while there is indeed a moral to the story, its real premise is sheer wachiness. The team of Corsaro and Chase upholds tradition by loading their interpretation with smoothly crafted silliness and outrageous sight gags whose imagery would make a Freudian analyst blush. Plenty of new jokes are added and from start to finish the production is a hoot.
Costumes
ST. LOUIS DISPATCH
Corsaro and Chase set a frivolously loveable mood by adding a bit of theatrical foreplay like two cigarette-smoking choirboys and leap-frogging nuns. From there on, all is absurdist farce (the Gendarme arriving astride a huge soft-sculpture revolver on rockers) and off-kilter vaudeville (Presto and Lecouf soft-shoe before a line of marcelle-waved chlorines dolled up to represent various Parisian landmarks). The scenic spectacle is of the simplest sort the thousands of babies born to the husband are white balloons in glistening grocery-cart prams. All this nimbly executed business merely paved the way for the apparently intuitive stylishness with which the St. Louis cast pranced through the evening.
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