Queens of the Nightlife
The temperature dipped below 25 degrees during the evening of Sunday, Jan. 21 as throngs of queers waited for the doors to open for Sasha Velour’s Nightgowns at Le Poisson Rouge.
For this first Nightgowns of the year, Velour had announced that one of the special guests would be Sapphira Cristál, a contestant on this current season of RuPaul’s Drag Race.
Earlier this month, during Drag Race’s TV premiere — which I watched at C’mon Everybody, our neighborhood gay bar — Cristál surprised everyone live-singing Puccini’s “O mio babbino caro.”
“Oh my beloved father, I like beautiful men,” read the purposely-wrong subtitles. “I want to go to Puerto Vallarta and find a lover” (see Cristál’s accompanying music video, with the almost unrecognizable Katya).
Cristál is, surprisingly, not the first Drag Race star to sing opera. That honor belongs to Monet X Change. (Velour, too, has lip-synched to Opera Philadelphia’s The Island That We Made.)
I had hoped that Cristál might grace us with her voice on Sunday night. But, at the last minute, it was announced that the diva had tested positive for Covid.
Even without Cristál, Nightgowns didn’t disappoint. Wearing a crinkly Mylar gown, Velour lip-synched to a remix of countertenor Klaus Nomi’s “Cold Song.”
With its rising, shivering vocal line, “Cold Song” is based on the bass aria “What Power Art Thou?” from Purcell’s King Arthur.
Velour’s look — also reminiscent of the Queen of the Night — paid homage to Nomi in several ways: First, the spiked hair with a widow’s peak. Second, the ruff, which Nomi wore to hide the Karposi’s sarcoma on his neck.
You see, Nomi’s “Cold Song” is actually about AIDS, making Velour’s act all the more poignant. “I can scarcely move or draw my breath,” Nomi sings. “Let me freeze again to death.”
Donning a pair of ski goggles, Velour transitioned to something completely different: Ariana Grande’s “yes, and?”
Opera and drag — like Nomi and Grande — may sound like strange bedfellows. But, as Velour writes in The Big Reveal, drag traces its origins to Greek tragedy. So does opera.
Opera is full of cross dressing. And Wagner’s concept of Gesamtkunstwerk or “total work of art” could just as easily be applied to drag.
“A little Klaus Nomi and Ariana Grande,” said Velour. “Now that is community.”
A similar sense of “community” was present in Catapult Opera’s Swann, which streamed virtually as part of the Prototype Festival last week. (I recently reviewed in-person productions Terce and Adoration for Parterre Box.)
This micro-opera is about William Dorsey Swann, born into slavery, believed to have been America’s first drag queen.
I enjoyed composer Tamar-kali’s pulsing violin and tinkling piano, though the credit music sounded a little too much like the Nancy Drew video game.
Dichotic listening was required for the sung and recited texts. Which appeared, sometimes simultaneously, onscreen, as typewriter and handwriting, respectively.
The libretto by Carl Hancock Rux, who also did the spoken word, was full of zingers: “Hell of iniquity,” “Destruction of the body,” “Most effeminate,” “I was beautiful.”
With sumptuous lighting — pearls, lace, and feathers — the film, directed James Blaszko, is fully non-diagetic. Meaning, that the actors didn’t vocalize, or appear to “hear” the music in any way.
Swann, played by Marcus Zebra, is supported by Tislarm Bouie and Joseph Zanders (whose drag name is Pepper). Strangely, countertenor Kenneth Alston Jr.’s credit was almost impossible to find.
Swann ends with this line: “Men will thus malign what they do not understand.” If drag were treated by the general public with the same cultural reverence as, say, opera, I somehow doubt there would be such bans on it.
