Duncan Meadows in Salome
Not all naked performers are rock musicians. Would you believe naked opera?
This is a scene from the opera Salome by Richard Strauss at London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 2008. In most productions of this opera, what titillates the audience is Salome's dance of the seven veils. Not in this production by David McVicar.
Duncan Meadows plays the part of the executioner, who is told by Salome to bring her the head of John the Baptist. The executioner wears a coat initially, but when he emerges from the dungeon with the head of John the Baptist, he is naked and covered in blood, and he's even frontally exposed as he climbs the steps.
Duncan Meadows is not an opera singer. The executioner part is a silent role. Duncan was a bodybuilder and street performer in the plaza in front of Covent Garden. One day, someone from the opera approached him about playing the role of the executioner. He was told from the start that he would be appearing naked, and he was happy to comply. In an interview, he said that he puts the coat back on for his curtain call at the end of the opera, but he would be happy to do the curtain call naked, too.
As an encore, so to speak, he was featured in the 2009 Royal Opera House naked calendar (above), without the blood. A naked calendar from an opera house? Only in Britain.
9 comments:
If you haven't see this already, check out the tenor Zachary Staines and his role in an opera about Hercules by Vivaldi. In this production he is nude for about two-thirds of the opera. Links to scenes from this are all over the internet and you can also buy a DVD of the full production.
I've seen that naked scene on TV...can't remember where. Here in the US? Oh, the authorities would be trying to shut them down. Out theatre company fought a battle over a production of "Take Me Out." As soon as the story went national - the county backed off.
Mr. Meadows has a beautiful ass.
Thanks, Anon. Yes, Zachary Stains was conspicuously and frontally nude in Ercole su'l Termodonte, and he's the subject of my next "Performers" post. You'll see it in about 3 weeks.
The Metropolitan Opera in NY had a production of Philip Glass' Akhnatan in Jan/Feb 2020. Akhnatan is sung by a counter tenor. Act 1, Scene 2 is the coronation of Akhnatan and the singer was naked and covered in gold paint for nearly all the scene. The San Francisco opera in 2015/2016 hired the Spanish director Calixto Bieto to direct Carmen. He had a naked bullfighter at beginning of Act 2, a scene not in the original. And at the Berlin Komische Opera he had many nude men in Rossini's Armida
Thanks, Thomas. More for me to investigate and post in the future! I was aware of Armida, but not the others. By the way, although Rossini wrote an opera called Armida, the Berlin Komische Opera's performance was a different opera called Armida, by Gluck.
Thank you for advising me on Armida. I did not know it was by Gluck. I saw both the Met opera and the SF opera. I like to see what Calixto is doing. I had seen Strauss' Salome at Sydney Opera 15-18 years. Salomes dance if the seven veils was accompanied by 6 naked male dancers. You may be interested in the Greek choreographer Dimitris Papaioannou. He staged the opening of the Greek Olympics and is the first dancer to choreograph a new dance piece for Pina Bausch Danz Wuppertal since she died 8 or 9 years ago. I have seen two pieces by him and they had six or more naked men for a good pp art of the dance. There were some naked women but usually fewer in number and shorter times of being naked. He likes the pale, white naked bodies in contrast to black landscapes or men in black suits.
Let me add one thing about Rossini's Armida: in a concert, a duet was sung from this opera, and such was the music and singing, that the ladies present blushed, so much their hearts were struck. We are probably less sensitive now, but I believe frontal nudes have the same function. They seem to tell us: de te fabula narratur!
There are nude performances in the States, no interference from the state, but a few publicized incidents of perverts taking photos of said performances calls things into question.
That's the 21st century's battle, how to keep everything consensual.
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