I just received an email from English National Opera inviting me to a concert given by the London Gay Symphony Orchestra. Which is to include Mussorgsky’s Night on Bare Mountain.
Tee hee snigger snigger smirk.
I mean – there are so many smutty puns to be made that they don’t even need pointing out. But I couldn’t help wondering if it might actually have been a deliberate reference to Brokeback Mountain.
Aha! I thought. Night on Brokeback Mountain! A hilarious gay-stroke-classical-music-themed pun. And there must be hundreds of other pieces of classical music that can have their titles similarly twisted for a cheap laugh. An idea like this is surely a goldmine of double entendres that could lead to a list of Finnemoresque proportions.
Except that Night on Brokeback Mountain remains the only gay classical pun I can think of. Possibly the only one there is. Oh, there’s the old joke of calling Vaughan Williams’ Floss Campi – wait for it – “Camp Flossi”… but that joke is as old as the work itself, and apparently it delighted the composer which somehow takes all the fun out of it.
