“Nothing had prefigured the opera’s Bacchus as she sauntered toward the audience: an immensely large, nearly naked woman — so large that my first thought was that her enormous breasts were prostheses. When she had nearly reached the edge of the stage, she stopped, silent and self-satisfied, as the chorus stood around her and caressed her, rubbing her breasts as they invoked the god in song. This was not the Baroque of waistcoats and powdered wigs, of delicate dances and imperiously raised index fingers.”