MEDIATHEK

"The Enchanted Organ" is a burlesque opera that celebrates sexuality and satirizes the porn industry, while parodying four hundred years of the operatic tradition. Composer/librettist team Gordon Beeferman and Charlotte Jackson bring wit and polymorphous perversity to this journey through "the Magical Kingdom of Porn," a place where past and present, straight and queer, and dead and living converge. Drawing on influences as diverse as classic 70s porn soundtracks, baroque oratorio, Ancient Greek hymns, and the Nutcracker ballet, this work-in-progress is as close as you'll get (or want to get!) to "aural sex."

“The Enchanted Organ” mingles gritty reality with surreal fantasy, aiming to entertain while also wryly commenting on itself. The musical idiom stretches beyond "classical music" to incorporate the sounds and rhythms of its subjects’ worlds. Bridging the gap between “high” art and “low,” we puncture the turgid balloon of “traditional” opera and revivify the flaccid clichés of porn.

Plot-wise, a quasi-realistic narrative frames a series of set pieces and vignettes set in a fantasy world. A naïve Midwestern boy arrives in Pornopolis with a battered suitcase and a dream to be the biggest porn superstar ever. He encounters both allies and adversaries, including an aspiring lesbian porn director; an all-knowing drag queen, Lady Honeysuckle; and aging German porn great Helmut Langeschlange. When our hero mysteriously becomes impotent, Lady Honeysuckle intervenes, escorting him on an enlightening quest through the magical land of porn. He witnesses many surreal spectacles, including a Baroque Oratorio in which the Vagina and the Anus vie for the favors of the Penis; a march of female ex-porn star zombies; a Greek chorus of fluffers; and porn legends long-dead of AIDS. Finally, in possession of the Enchanted Organ, a magical (and musical) talisman, our hero returns and launches his career with a legendary “performance.”