This Salzburg critic goes inside your pants
mainFrom the Salzburger Nachrichten review of Ildebrando dArcangelo’s performance in the festival’s Don Giovanni:
Die langen schwarzen Haare nach hinten gegelt, in schwarzer Hose und Hemd und Schlangenmustermantel zeigt er bodygebuildete Muskeln, die gut und gerne darauf schließen lassen, dass er auch Ähnliches in der Hose haben könnte.
His long black hair slicked back, sporting black tights and shirt and a snakeskin print jacket, he displays body-builder muscles, which are pretty good and which makes one happy to conclude that he may also have similar attributes inside his pants.
The critic’s name is Karl Harb. There may be more sensitive ways of making his point.
The critic made it quite clear in the introductory paragraph that he was discussing the varying directorial interpretations of Don Juan and considering that his choice of words in describing the Don Juan more commonly seen in other productions was quite casual, the “dicke Hose” reference is perfectly acceptable.
Who rendered the German original by Karl Harb into English?
The German contains no reference to “dicke Hose” and the German “gut und gerne darauf schließen lassen” does not mean “[he displays body-builder muscles], which are pretty good and which makes one happy to conclude”. “Gut und gerne” is a phrase meaning “definitively”, “if not more”, “easily”. In
the context of this quote from Karl Hab it simply means “his body-builder muscles easily leads one to conclude…..”