Lust, infidelity, bronzed muscle-men humiliating themselves in public - opera has always been dumb fun. Pop culture should take lessons from it, rather than the other way roundPerhaps we should not be sniffy about the new CEO of the English National Opera, Stuart Murphy, drawing a parallel between opera and Love Island, urging those missing the dating show to visit the Coliseum. `As my teenagers sat glued to the final of Love Island last week,` he writes in the Evening Standard, `it struck me how closely it echoes the drama we see on stage at English National Opera: passion, lust, betrayal, glamour, love, friendship, silliness. Opera has that in spades, just with the world´s most beautiful music.`He´s right. The parallels with reality TV are plain. There´s certainly plenty of buff dimwits in opera. Think of Siegfried, barrel-chested and brainless, tasked with forging a sword, breaking a spear, killing a dragon and walking through a ring of fire to awaken a sleeping goddess before the curtain falls, as if he were in some ancient Norse prototype for a particularly sadistic bush-tucker challenge in I´m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. Continue reading...
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