Barihunk trio in NY premiere of operatic Angels in America

Wayne Tigges, Aaron Blake, Andrew Garland and Michael Weyandt (l-r)

The new New York City Opera closes its season with the New York Premiere of Péter Eötvös's Angels in America, distilling the two-night, seven-hour play into a single, powerful evening of opera. The cast includes the barihunk trio of Andrew Garland as Prior Walter, Michael Weyandt as Joe, Wayne Tigges as Roy Cohn and hunkentenor Aaron Blake as Louis. The opera comes with a warning of "strong sexual content, nudity, mature themes and language."

The opera was originally written for the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris where it premiered in 2004. The cast included barihunks Daniel Belcher and Omar Ebrahim, as well as Barbara Hendricks, Roberta Alexander, Derek Lee Ragin and and Topi Lehtipuu.  

Angels in America received its West Coast premiere in 2013 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall with barihunk David Adam Moore and Nikolas Nackley as Joe. Moore has also sung the role at the Fort Worth Opera Festival and the Opera Wrocławsa in Poland.

The opera is based on Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name and will be sung in English with supertitles. There will be four performances running from June 10-16 and additional cast information and tickets are available online.

New "opera" uses mashup of porn soundtrack and 20th century music

It was bound to happen, a porno opera. Of course, it it had to be in either the Netherlands or Germany. I guess Germany figured it had featured enough soft-porn Regie productions, so the "honor" goes to the Netherlands. Operadagen Rotterdam 2013 will be presenting the world premiere of Pornographia on Friday, May 31 and Saturday, June 1. 

The opera, which is being described as a mix of performance art and opera is the first part of a series of three about contemporary sociocultural trends in society. The other two will be Megalomania and Nostalgia.    

The "score" of the opera will be the full soundtrack of a gay porn movie with fragments inspired by twentieth century music classics. The opera is about a small society of three figures whose mundane life is intervened by the entrance of a handsome young man. The need to satisfy their feelings of lust drives them crazy and eventually leads them to destruct what they crave for.  

The May 31st performance will be preceeded by a panel discussion about the pornofication of the contemporary artistic discourse in the Netherlands. Pornographia is being described as a new experimental operatic performance about our collective need for immediate gratification of our desires.

Pornographia

Director Sjaron Minailo says he is using pornography as a metaphor for a culture in which the desires of the consumer are the only engine of production; A culture in which the desire for realism results in the opposite: the pornographic illustration of sexuality consumes the sexuality itself.

Admission is € 10 and tickets are available online.