[Dixielandjazz] MOON REDUX ??????

[Stephen Barbone]

Well, it ain't Dixieland or OKOM, but it is hilarious. Ya gotta love it.
Well worth the read. Hey Tito and Luis, is this typical in South
America? ;-) VBG

November 11, 2003 - New YorkTimes

The Case of the Operatic Moon

By LARRY ROHTER

       RIO DE JANEIRO — Those in the opening-night audience at the
Teatro Municipal here hated the director Gerald Thomas's radical
reworking of Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde," and they were eager to let
him know it.

Though cast members were spared when they came out to take their bows,
the moment Mr. Thomas appeared he was greeted with a fusillade of boos,
jeers and insults.

So Mr. Thomas responded in a way that many artists who feel
misunderstood or unappreciated have undoubtedly dreamed of. As his
leading lady looked on with a horrified expression, he turned his back,
dropped his pants and green drawers and mooned the audience.

Now Mr. Thomas, the eternal enfant terrible of Brazilian theater, is
paying the price. Acting on a complaint filed by the local chief of
police, prosecutors have charged him with public indecency, and on Nov.
11 he is scheduled to appear before a judge who will decide whether
there are grounds to proceed with the case.

The indictment has startled artists and civil libertarians here. This
is, after all, the notoriously permissive and even licentious city in
which thousands of people parade virtually naked on the streets and over
television during the annual Carnival celebrations — with the full
approval of the same authorities who have now gone after Mr. Thomas.

Then again, Mr. Thomas has been a lightning rod since settling here
nearly 20 years ago, bringing with him a passion for the avant-garde.

Born in Rio, the child of a German Communist refugee from Hitler and a
Welsh psychoanalyst of Lithuanian Jewish extraction, Mr. Thomas, 49,
spent his early adult years in London and then headed for New York,
where he directed 18 Samuel Beckett plays at La MaMa from 1979 to 1984
before returning home. In a telephone interview from London, where he
has temporarily taken refuge, Mr. Thomas acknowledged that his staging
of "Tristan und Isolde" was meant to be revisionist and provocative.
During the overture a woman sits masturbating on a sofa. Another scene
much mocked by critics has Sigmund Freud sniffing cocaine and tossing it
into the air like confetti, and the production also features a chorus of
Hasidic Jews and a fashion show.

"I'm not a realistic director," Mr. Thomas said. "I love mixing things
up and doing all this metalinguistic stuff that I do. But I thought that
I had created a pretty formal opera with a thoughtful concept. Fashion
really does kill passion, especially in a piece like `Tristan und
Isolde.' "

Mr. Thomas added that he was accustomed to being booed and said that in
certain circumstances, like a controversial production of Wagner's
"Flying Dutchman" that he mounted at the Teatro Municipal in 1987, he
even preferred that to applause. What enraged him in this case, he said,
was the anti-Semitic remarks that he says he heard from some in the
audience.

"From the first three rows I very clearly heard voices saying, `You
filthy little Jew, why don't you go back to the camps?' " he recalled.
"That was organized by members of the International Richard Wagner
Forum, who had come from Germany and Buenos Aires because they didn't
like my staging. I lost it, and the rest is history."

Others associated with the production or in the audience that night said
that they did not hear any such slurs. Mendel Mendlewicz, a Polish-born
Jew, is president of the Rio chapter of the Richard Wagner Society, and
though he says he refused to attend Mr. Thomas's staging of "Tristan und
Isolde" on
principle "because I knew that madman would make his own play with
Wagner's music as background," he dismissed Mr. Thomas's accusation of
anti-Semitism.

"I don't believe that it happened," Mr. Mendlewicz said. "In fact, I
would bet on it. I personally checked with friends who were there, and
not one of the more than 20 people I consulted heard anything like
that."

Even within the world of Brazilian culture Mr. Thomas has collected
plenty of enemies in a long series of feuds and spats. But a group of
prominent actors, musicians, writers, directors and critics have come to
his defense with a petition calling on prosecutors to withdraw the
charges. They say that Mr. Thomas is at most guilty of "an unthinking
attitude that is worthy of criticism but not of punishment."

The American composer Philip Glass has also come to Mr. Thomas's
defense. The two men created an opera called "Mattogrosso" together in
1987, and Mr. Glass, calling Mr. Thomas a director "who works
emotionally and on a very high artistic level," condemned the charges
against him a grotesque miscarriage of justice.

"This is totally a free-speech issue, surprising in a country that we
love for its openness to all kinds of political and social dialogue,"
Mr. Glass said in a telephone interview from New York. "The act itself
was not obscene. What they are objecting to is an artist replying to his
critics, and knowing Gerald's work, he would of course choose a
theatrical response."

Mr. Thomas said he was being singled out for harassment by the
government of Rio de Janeiro State for political reasons. In the
newspaper column that he wrote until recently for a daily here, he
repeatedly mocked the former governor, Anthony Garotinho, and his wife,
Rosinha Matheus, the current governor, and accused them of
administrative irregularities.

But Helena Severo, who is both the artistic director of the Teatro
Municipal and the state's secretary of culture and had hired Mr. Thomas
for what turned out to be four sold-out performances in August, denied
that there was a vendetta against him.

"Gerald's problem is with the Brazilian justice system, not with the
Garotinho family, which has nothing to do with this," she said.

"I've urged him not to make this worse by making dramatic declarations
meant to turn this situation into a public scandal, but he won't
listen," Ms. Severo continued, exasperation in her voice. "I admire him
as an artist, but as this case progresses, his arguments keep changing.
First it was religious bigotry, now it's political intimidation. This
thing has already been overblown, and now I don't know where it is going
to end."

The prosecutor who filed the charges, Gisela Brandao, said in a brief
telephone interview that even though "we had the option of shelving the
case," she chose to forge ahead because Mr. Thomas "didn't want the
relief to which he was entitled," referring to the option of admitting
guilt and paying a fine of about $400.

"The law is the same for all," she maintained when asked if Mr. Thomas
was being harassed for political reasons. But when asked why, if that
was the case, prosecutors did not also move against Carnival revelers,
she said, "I'm not going to make any comments about the merits of the
case" and referred further inquiries to the press spokesman for the
prosecutor's office.

Mr. Thomas, asked about his rejection of the plea bargain, said: "I do
have principles. What kind of example would I be setting for my fellow
artists? I don't accept the fact that I committed a crime because I
decided to moon the audience in my own theater."