Performers - Part 14

Les Mamelles de Tirésias

Another naked opera moment occurred in the 2010 production of Francis Poulenc's farcical 1945 opera Les Mamelles de Tirésias (The Breasts of Tirésias) at the Liceu Opera in Barcelona.

The plot, based on a 1917 surrealist play by Guillaume Apollinaire, goes as follows: Thérèse tires of her life as a submissive woman and becomes the male Tirésias when her breasts turn into balloons and float away. Her husband is not pleased by this, still less so when she ties him up and dresses him as a woman.  Having become a General, Tirésias starts a successful campaign against childbirth and is hailed by the populace. Fearful that France will be left sterile if women give up sex, the husband vows to find a way to bear children without women.

In Act 2, the husband's project has been a spectacular success, and he has given birth to 40,049 children in a single day. A journalist asks how he can afford to feed the brood, but the husband explains that the children have all been very successful in careers in the arts, and have made him a rich man with their earnings.  The couple reconciles, and the whole cast gathers at the footlights to urge the audience:

        Ecoutez, ô Français, les leçons de la guerre

        Et faites des enfants, vous qui n'en faisiez guère

        Cher public: faites des enfants!

        (Heed, o Frenchmen, the lessons of the war
        And make babies, you who hardly ever make them!
        Dear public: Make babies!)

OK, I told you it was surrealistic.  Note that the original play premiered during World War I, when France had been depopulated by the war.

At the start of the Barcelona production, Thérèse, played by Maria Bayo, is onstage, and her husband, played by Gabriel Bermudez, is in the shower (above):

Here's a screen capture from that scene.