Word: ant
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Holding his champagne glass high, the baritone sang a warm and impassioned aria to the health of his mistress-ant. He had scarcely finished when the restaurant proprietor brushed the mistress-ant from tablecloth to floor and stepped on it. The baritone dropped dead, the brasses blazed, and the audience swung into one of the liveliest musical brawls to erupt in Germany in years...
...occasion was a performance of Composer Peter Ronnefeld's four-act opera, The Ant. Spectators at the Düsseldorf Opera seemed to find no middle ground; they were either enraged or entranced by the generally cacophonous score and by the frankly libidinous libretto that provided space for an orgiastic ballet, a striptease and a recitative recounting of the early sexual exploits of a couple of convicts. Composer Ronnefeld, 26, who conducted the orchestra, was greeted by a caterwauling of penny whistles from the top balcony. ("Idiots up there!" shouted pro-Ronnefeld forces in other parts of the house...
...theatrical opera tells the story of Salvatore, a shabby, greying voice teacher who falls in love with Formica, a curvy voice student. Later, in a fit of jealousy. Salvatore strangles Formica at the peak of a coloratura run. In prison, the murderer's only companion is a queen ant that has flown in the window, and Salvatore comes to believe that the ant is his dead beloved...
After Salvatore's release, the action shifts to the cabaret where he sings his climactic aria (Vivat Formica] before the ant dies beneath the proprietor's heel...
...bombardier beetle is an inconspicuous insect that ranges much of the world with calm and self-assurance-and for jood reason. When attacked by a ferocious ant, its natural enemy, the bombardier beetle (Brachinus) merely stands its ground, pushes a flexible tube from its rear end and points it at the enemy. With a small but audible bang, a cloud of acrid vapor envelops the ant, reducing it to paralysis or trembling confusion. Until recently, the bombardier beetle's efficient defensive weapon was pretty much of a mystery. Entomologists thought that it simply squirted out a liquid that exploded...