Campbell Vertesi

Wellsung has a great post up today about an "only weird for opera people" moment.  The setting is a community choir Halloween concert, with a theme of "dangerous women."  They sang lots of stuff, including the lascivious "Dance of the Seven Veils" from Salome. Nice, right?  Until they had the local dance troupe come out to perform that number - who were all actual 15 year old girls.  Can we say "awkward"? 

I can think of lots of great stories like that, where a piece of opera was taken completely out of context in a way that is just plain wrong if you know the meaning of the words or the plot.  Not wrong like a test answer is wrong, but Wrong like a 10 year old at a striptease class is wrong.  Or Wrong like the wild success of the Jackass movies is wrong.

A tenor friend of mine was asked to sing at a funeral - they had him sing Nessun Dorma ("no one sleeps", the aria of a man facing his death in the morning).  I can't count how many times I've heard of O mio babbino caro being used at weddings (the aria of a girl twisting her father around her finger to let her marry her boyfriend, of whom the father disapproves) .  I mean, we can all aknowledge that this is beautiful music, but couldn't you pick something else?  How about the Liebestode?  That would be a fine fit for a wedding...

 Anyone else have good stories about inappropriate uses of arias?