Adults only: Nips and willies at Munich’s biblical ballet

Adults only: Nips and willies at Munich’s biblical ballet

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norman lebrecht

July 06, 2015

We’ve received a mildly disturbing preview of Jephtha’s Daughter, a ballet on a Bible story which opens tomorrow as part of the Bavarian State Opera’s July festival.

Staged by an Israeli choreographer, Saar Magal, it involves nude dancers with strap-on penises.

We’re not bothered by the nudity, or by any possible transgender agenda.

What bothers us is that implication that the only way to tell a Bible story these days is to strip it dwn to socks.

Watch the video here (adults only).

Jephta_s_Daughter

Comments

  • william osborne says:

    Germans have a very different sensibility about nudity. With this heat wave Europe is having, there will be hundreds of stark naked sun bathers in Munich’s main park, Der Englische Garten. The landscaping is very British, the leafless damsels less so. Anyway, Magal’s ballet certainly fits the weather.

  • RW2013 says:

    We had large and engorged strap-on penises in the recent new Ariadne (SO in Berlin), and the audience just yawned.

  • Please be more respectful says:

    Sorry but women’s wearing strap-ons is not a ‘transgender agenda’. Even if we were to imagine those strap-ons as real, then that would be an ‘intersex agenda’ NOT necessarily a ‘transgender agenda’. Please read up on this. This isn’t the first time that you’ve made trans* people the brunt of some unsavoury comparison.

  • Le forgeron Blancard says:

    I appreciate the Editor’s worry that you can only tell bible stories naked these days. As a small measure of consolation I recommend the bible reading scene in Fanciulla del West. It is melodious, wholesome and edifying, and our heroine and the cowboys are all FULLY DRESSED. Since there is a snowstorm in the following act, there is little risk that they will take their clothes off then.

  • Theodore McGuiver says:

    It looks rather nicely done, not at all titillating or sexual. The music’s a bit vapid, though.

  • La Donna del Largo says:

    Have you taken a look lately at any of the Bible-themed paintings of Peter Paul Rubens?

  • Theodore McGuiver says:

    That’s because Calixto Bieito hasn’t directed it, yet.

    • Theodore McGuiver says:

      That was meant as a reply to Forgeron…

    • Max Grimm says:

      You have to give it to Calixto Bieito, his diminished use of textiles can bring with it some budgetary benefits.

    • La Donna del Largo says:

      Bieito’s productions, especially those presented in the past decade or so, use nudity quite sparingly and never, in my experience, gratuitously. Those of us who have actually seen the productions (and not just a still photo or two deliberately chosen for sensational effect) know that.

      • Theodore McGuiver says:

        My implication was that Bieito often wilfully does the exact opposite of what’s indicated in the score, not that he’s a nudity freak. As for seeing his productions, don’t worry, I’ve worked on some.

        • La Donna del Largo says:

          An example or two, please, of Bieito staging details that are the “opposite” of “what’s indicated in the score?”

          • Hilary says:

            For instance, in his over-busy production of Fidelio Calixto inserted the slow movement from String Quartet Op.132. The players descended in a cage if I remember rightly. Not indicated in the score, and yet one of the highpoints of this less than satisfying productions

  • Pianofortissimo says:

    Just a little more Eurotrash. It’s like some itching in your back, don’t mind about it and it will disappear.

    What about the ballet’s Music?

  • Boring Fileclerk says:

    Nothing in this production would shock the average person in the age of the internet.

  • French musician says:

    By “us” and “we” do you mean “me” and “I”?

  • M2N2K says:

    Where is this “implication that the only way to tell a Bible story these days is to strip it down to socks”? All I see here is the suggestion that this is one valid way. Nowhere do I detect any claim that this “the only way”.

  • M2N2K says:

    It is impossible to judge the production based on one minute of video, but two things are pretty clear: 1) the “agenda” looks much more of a hermaphroditic than of a transgender nature and 2) there is no implication that this is “the only way” of telling this story, but rather that this is one valid way of doing that – no more no less.

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