Zachary Stains in
Ercole su'l Termodonte
Vivaldi wrote the opera Ercole su'l Termodonte (Hercules on Thermodon) in 1723. It's about one of the labors of Hercules in which he has to fight a tribe of Amazon women. The opera was revived in 2006 at the Spoleto Festival in Italy. See the opening of the opera above.
The music is rather repetitious (there's a reason this opera hadn't been revived in almost 300 years), but keep watching, because after around 20 seconds, Hercules appears, played by American tenor Zachary Stains wearing the legendary lion skin of the lion that Hercules killed, and almost nothing else.
The set, featuring large marble broken phalluses, has been called the gayest thing ever.
Hercules' lion skin does not cover his nudity, and Stains does not try to hide it.
In fact, later, he doffs the lion skin entirely for a while.
Here's the aria in which he gets completely naked. Before that, we see him kissing another guy. What's up with that? The other guy is his male companion Theseus, whose part was written for a female voice but originally played in 1723 by a castrato (a castrated male singer with a high voice) because a papal edict forbade women to sing in Rome. In the 2006 revival, Theseus was played by a woman in a male costume.
It's interesting that the Church viewed the idea of a woman singing as so awful that it needed to be banned, but the Church had no problem with the idea of castrating a boy to preserve his high voice.
In any case, Hercules kisses Theseus, which seems rather gay, and then proceeds to take off what little clothes he has on. Enjoy.
3 comments:
Well, I am for once speechless.
Zachary would get my attention. Would have been exciting to see all the other male actors on stage in the nude as well.
Sorry to learn this fact, however. Zachary was sentenced to 10 years probation for his child porn habit. The gods have fallen.
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