EPATER LE BOURGEOIS

“Yo, Pollo, whazzup?”

“I told ya’ Frank, call me Willy, and I’mma major bored.”

“Ya just tired of blowing smoke rings, huh?”

“Any ideas Frank?”

“Let’s write an opera, WILLY. Let’s make the homies crazy like.”

“I’m in. What about?”

“Well, since the war, women aren’t having babies”.

“Right. They enjoyed working in the munitions factories too much.”

“Shut up! What if men had the babies?”

“Oh we wouldn’t have one or two at a time. We’d figure out a way to repopulate the world”.

“Keep goin’ dude.”

“So, we could turn the wife into a man and her husband could have lots of babies”.

“I love it. How would we stage that?”

“Hmmm. She could have balloons for boobs, tied on with a string, and she could cut the string and the boobs would float away!”

“Yeh, and we could put the husband in a dress”.

“We are amazing. We are righteous. We are THERE! We’ll have music schools producing this for generations to come. What’ll we call it?”

“How about...The Boobs of Berthe?”

“Nah, what about ….Les Mamelles de Tiresias? She starts out as Terese and becomes Tiresias. That’s got more class”.

“You are a genius!”

And so...Francis Poulenc and Guillaume Apollinaire came up with a totally outrageous but charming opera and Juilliard Opera gave it an appropriately wacky production. Set and costumes were perfect. Timothy J. McDevitt was a hoot as the husband in a dress (or his tutu was too-too) and Meredith Lustig was an adorable Therese. All roles were delightfully performed and Emma Griffin directed with consummate style. Who says opera isn’t fun???

--Meche Kroop for The Opera Insider