POULENC : Les Mamelles de Tirésias

Gender norms explode on the French Riviera in Les Mamelles de Tirésias (The Breasts of Tiresias), Poulenc’s surreal opéra bouffe. Thérèse, a bored housewife, grows weary of her daily routine and suddenly becomes the male General Tirésias when her breasts turn into balloons and float away. As they lead a new life fighting distant wars on foreign battlefields, their stay-at-home husband discovers a way to make babies on his own—but not just one: 40,049 of them. This clever comedy features a delightfully fizzy cocktail of opera, cabaret, and jazz, with a tale as consciously arty, feminist, and political as it is insightfully witty.

Les Mamelles de Tirésias is sung in French with English supertitles. Francis Poulenc, music and libretto

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