Performers - Part 12

Armida

In researching this blog, I'm finding out that there have been quite a few opera performances with naked males onstage.  Who would have thought?

Today's opera is Armida, written by Gluck in 1777, in a 2009 performance by the Komische Oper (Comic Opera) of Berlin.  Gluck was a less famous contemporary of Mozart and Haydn.  The production was directed by Spanish director Calixto Bieito.  Bieito has a reputation for including naked males in his opera stagings, and in Armida he went all out.

The story of Armida and Rinaldo, from Tasso's epic poem Jerusalem Delivered, has been a popular one for opera composers.  It has been used for 16 different operas by composers including Monteverdi, Handel, Vivaldi, Haydn, Rossini, and Dvorak, among others.  The story takes place during the First Crusade.  Rinaldo, a Christian knight, is ensnared by Armida, a Muslim sorceress.  She was going to kill him, but she falls in love with him.  She casts a spell to make him love her, but she is frustrated that he only loves her because of the spell.  At the end, two other knights rescue Rinaldo and take him away.  Armida is abandoned and left to despair.

Under Calixto Bieito, the music may be the same as Gluck's original, but the setting has radically changed (above).  Set in modern times, Armida is a high-power corporate bitch.  She is surrounded by a dozen stark naked men whom she completely controls (her corporate underlings?)

In a reversal of the usual gender roles, she treats the men as sex objects to be used for her amusement.

Here's a very short clip with Maria Bengtsson as Armida singing Gluck's 18th century music with some naked men serving as eye candy.

Here's a photo from that scene.  It's worth clicking on to see a larger view.  I'll say one thing for the Germans – they're not prudish about nudity.

The plot thickens when the one man she wants, Rinaldo (at right), who is clothed throughout, doesn't want her.  Meanwhile, there's some eye candy in the background.

In this production, Rinaldo doesn't escape.  She kills him.  And of course, there's more eye candy in the background.

The last scene with the dead Rinaldo and the ever-present eye candy.

There was a revival of Armida at the Komische Oper Berlin in 2011 with a different cast and a few changes.  Armida was sung by Elena Semenova in a period costume instead of modern dress, although the telephone that she's holding indicates a weird mixture of old and new in the staging.  Judging from this photo, Armida is quite the dominatrix.  The dozen men were still onstage and still naked.

I wonder how many people who would normally never go to the opera came to see the naked men?