Sylvia Nun-Fellows, Artistic Director and Interim Potentate of the Chesley Opera Company (COC) knew that this was their final season unless they could turn it all around.
Attendance had been steadily declining for years, and they were about to lose their grant from the Canadian Arbiter of Culture Office (CACO).
Reading the Opera Times, she saw that COC was hardly the only company in trouble. The San Francisco Opera was turning to historical themes, planning an opera about the building of the atomic bomb. In London (England) they were even more desperate, putting together some kind of new thing called, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. An opera flush with lesbian love, onstage nudity, and from what she could make out, themes of domination of submission.
Smart buggers. Why couldn’t SHE come up with something like that?
Yes, why couldn’t she? They had planned to do Wagner this year. What if the Valkyries were all gay? Even better … transvestites.
And they could be atomic – no, radioactive. That sounded cool. And so the first all-transvestite, irradiated version of Die Walküre was born.
It was pure CACO, and the COC was secured.
Inspired by:
Singing Lesbians to Rescue Opera House | The Epic, Tragic, Operatic Story of Doctor Atomic