Francis Poulenc - Les mamelles de Tirésias 1994

Conductor - Yves Abel
Mise en scene - Alfredo Arias
Chorus director - Donald Nally
Tirésias - Iride Martinez
Husband - Elijah "Kenn" Chester
Francis Menotti - Executive Producer
Spoleto Festival 1994

[@ElijahChester]

Can't believe I finally found a video copy of this amazing experience we had together sweet Iride! My stage name in the opera was Kenn Chester. I go by first name Elijah now. It is a complete thrill to discover this today. I found a poster of this production in my attic as I was Covid19 quarantine cleaning LOL...and decided to look it up...and voila!...found this. So happy.

[@alanfischer1948]

How nice to see this!! I was LaCouf in this production.

[@ElijahChester]

Great to "connect" with you after all these years monsieur Fischer! I played the husband in this production...(although they have my name incorrect). It was Kenn Chester. I now go by my first name Elijah. Hope you are well! find me online and let's reconnect. Take care

[@DremisDerinfet]

I've had the wonderful honor of participating in both this wonderful Opera by Poulenc and your oppera "the night visitors". Two great experiences in my career

[@jooheelee3893]

Thx for uploading

[@angusmcrandy]

In a short prologue, the theater director introduces the work, promising the audience a moral piece on the necessity of having children. Act 1 Thérèse tires of her life as a submissive woman and becomes the male Tirésias when her breasts turn into balloons and float away. Her husband is not pleased by this, still less so when she ties him up and dresses him as a woman. Meanwhile, a pair of drunken gamblers called Presto and Lacouf affectionately shoot one another and are mourned by the assembled townspeople. Thérèse marches off to conquer the world as General Tiresias, leaving her captive husband to the attentions of the local gendarme, who is fooled by his female attire. Off-stage, General Tiresias starts a successful campaign against childbirth and is hailed by the populace. Fearful that France will be left sterile if women give up sex, the husband vows to find a way to bear children without women. Lacouf and Presto return from the dead and express both interest and scepticism. Act 2 The curtain rises to cries of "Papa!" The husband's project has been a spectacular success, and he has given birth to 40,049 children in a single day. A visiting Parisian journalist asks how he can afford to feed the brood, but the husband explains that the children have all been very successful in careers in the arts, and have made him a rich man with their earnings. After chasing the journalist off, the husband decides to raise a journalist of his own, but is not completely pleased with the results. The gendarme now arrives to report that, because of overpopulation, the citizens of Zanzibar are all dying of hunger. The husband suggests getting ration cards printed by a tarot-reading fortune-teller. Just such a fortune-teller immediately appears, looking rather familiar under her mask. The fortune-teller prophesies that the fertile husband will be a multi-millionaire, but that the sterile gendarme will die in abject poverty. Incensed, the gendarme attempts to arrest her, but she strangles him and reveals herself as none other than Thérèse. The couple reconcile, and the whole cast gathers at the footlights to urge the audience: Ecoutez, ô Français, les leçons de la guerre Et faites des enfants, vous qui n'en faisiez guère Cher public: faites des enfants! Heed, o Frenchmen, the lessons of the war And make babies, you who hardly ever make them! Dear audience: Make babies!