Word: offenbach
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...theater is never far from Lacroix's mind, so when he was approached by A.B.T. Artistic Director Mikhail Baryshnikov, who had seen his work, he welcomed a collaboration. In presenting Gaite Parisienne, a fizzy romp set to Manuel Rosenthal's brilliant editing of Offenbach, Baryshnikov knew what he did not want. "I was certain that I didn't want the heavy Maxim's look with the black stockings for the cancan girls. I wanted something light and funny and young." Both men wanted to create their own vision of fin-de-siecle Paris...
...look at pinned-on paper fans printed with their personal drill. Most get six hours of relentless exercise, beginning with a brisk 1 1/2- to 5 1/2-mile hike at dawn and climaxing in the afternoon with the women's aerobic circuit, WAC in the appropriate acronym. As Offenbach's cancan blares, exercisers WAC out on each of 22 pieces of alternating equipment, moving every 45 seconds from arm weights to a stationary bike to leg presses to the rowing machine. To help the medicine go down, there is often a spoonful of sweetener (not sugar, naturally). After the hike, instructors...
...first priority was to use her celebrity status as newly retired diva to raise funds, often traded a personal appearance for a donation. Inevitably, quality suffered while she concentrated on money; City Opera hit its aesthetic nadir in 1982 with a tired The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein by Offenbach and a ludicrous I Lombardi by Verdi, which Sills didn't see until the dress rehearsal. "I have had my turkeys," she admits. "Had I seen it earlier, I would have pulled Lombardi out of the repertory. But two days before, I didn't have the courage...
There is a grandiose theatricality about the entire exhibition that, ultimately, gives the clothing a secondary role. For all the sensory overload-the perfume, rooms decorated (courtesy of Cardin) to look like Maxim's, the Offenbach piped in like a sound track for an ancient travelogue-"La Belle Epoque" is less an evocation of mood or an exhibition of high style than it is an exaltation of swank, of money, of society. In that sense it is about fashion, not clothes, historical re-creation without historical perspective...
...know you, I know you," says the clownish John Styx, greeting an arrival at the gates of hell in Jacques Offenbach's comic opera Orpheus in the Underworld. "You do look familiar," replies the rubbery-faced Miss Public Opinion. He should; Styx is being played by Sid Caesar, 59, and Opinion by Imogene Coca, 73, stars from 1950 to 1954 of Your Show of Shows, a TV comedy classic. This week, in a rare appearance together, they will be reprising many of their best bits with some singing and much mugging in four performances of Orpheus at the Opera...