Comments

1

Aidan Lang is a bumbling fool incapable of any meaningful leadership. His legacy will be that he fired everyone capable and kept only those who kissed his ass properly. He won’t be missed by anyone in the organization. Seattle Opera is lucky it survived his time there. Good ridence to bad rubbish.

2

Appreciate the report!

3

Well, as you can see from my avatar….
I was alarmed once Hansel and Gretel ads started appearing on the stranger’s site couple of years ago showing a grotesque, seemingly male-born witch, attacking innocent blonde children.
The ads were only published on this site and attempted to portray the show as one with a fun “drag” element to it.
I called the opera and got Mr. Lang’s email. He did reply, though throughout our correspondence totally ignored my concerns that this looks a bit like an attention-grabbing gimmick, that it is likely to be demeaning to all involved, that it is likely to be many kids first intro to trans womanhood and is going to be somewhat frightening from now on.

There was a talk about the composer writing the music for a lower tone voice, hence the need for a male singer, though drag was only added recently, and a challenge to see the show.
I went and enjoyed it till the witch turns into a real ugly maniac, exposed semi hairy real pot belly, huge flaunting fake breasts, constantly eating and shopping.
I brought up my impression in a very gentle manner during the post show talk, and apparently I wasn’t the only one bothered by it. A cis woman added that this was demeaning to all women, and a lesbian couple that had their hands raised throughout were systematically ignored by the person with the mic once he realized what the mood was.
Aidan never returned my post show email.

I have no inside information about the organization and I’m likely to be very subjective, and yet @1 does not come as a total shock for me.

4

Apparently an opera story gets the same number of comments as did the Dave Segal review of king Crimson...


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