The Paris opera houses show: man and woman, that doesn’t work – culture
The Paris opera houses are showing in several operas that men and women do not go together. It’s sometimes tragic, sometimes funny – but always overwhelming.
Thérèse is fed up. About being a woman, about her husband, about patriarchy. So she leaves her husband, becomes one herself and calls himself Tirésias. After all, this mysterious soothsayer from ancient mythology was first a man, then a wife and mother for seven years, and then a man again. So he was able to report revealing information on the question put to him/her by the gods as to who had more fun in sex. Tiresias said: the woman. In the Paris Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the poetically bold concrete building became famous in the opening year of 1913 for the scandalous premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s “Le sacre du printemps”, the captivatingly agile singing and playing Sabine Devieilhe Thérèse/Tirésias. Devieilhe jumps around first in the red tutu and then in the suit, her voice shoots out high notes with amusement. She loves slapstick, clothes, feminism. Transforming into a general and back into a woman, she never lets out a joke that fits the noisy opera title “Les Mamelles de Tirésias”, mamelles means udder, teats.
