Last night on Jeopardy!'s Tournament of Champions, a giddy Alex Trebek dressed up in Metropolitan Opera costumes for a trippy category on "Operatic Costumes." Now that we have seen America's most robotic game show host vamping in a Le Comte Ory nun costume, are we ready for the gender-bending Rapture? [Jeopardy, Esquire, @ZWoolfe]
There are just as many who don't understand belting divas as people who can't watch cars continuously turning left. So why do people still flock to these two events? The crashes and booing, of course.
Luciano Pavarotti, the outsized Italian tenor generally regarded as the finest operatic voice of his generation, has passed away at the age of 71. Best known by the general audience as the fattest guy in the Three Tenors, Pavarotti had a storied career which saw him achieve almost every measure of operatic success. He also starred in one the most unintentionally funny movies we've ever seen, 1982's Yes, Giorgio, and performed with Bono, Sting, and Elton John, which must have sucked. Pavarotti had a special relationship with audiences at the Metropolitan Opera.
The post-Volpe era at the Metropolitan Opera begins with a populist bang: They're slapping ads on any surface to which they'll stick. The Times reports that with opera's natural audience now noisily unwrapping its sour candies in that great hall in the sky, a new generation of people willing to spend $300 to watch carb-fuelled grotesques belt out "Ernani involami - all'abborrito amplesso" must be found, and soon. Will the strategy work? The Times trots out high-culture expert Leon Wieseltier, who seems skeptical:
