'Sex pest strikes': Simon Keenlyside and Anna Maria Martinez in Don Giovanni at the Royal Opera House, 2002. Photograph: Tristram Kenton
Today's the day for Sun readers - and first-time, sheepish Sun readers who normally read the Guardian - to apply for cheap tickets to the first night of the Royal Opera House's new season on September 8, which I wrote about last week. And I have to say, hats off to the Sun - what a fabulous job they have done. On the front page the headlines read: "Amy was 'spiked with e'"; "Honeymoon Groom Ben Brain Dead"... and "A night at the Opera from £7.50... OPERA WE LOVE IIIIIIT!"
Inside comes the headline: "Sex, death, booze, bribery, revenge, ghosts... who said opera is boring?" The story explains that "The truth is, most operas are dirtier than Amy Winehouse's beehive, riper than a full-on effing rant by Gordon Ramsay and more violent than a Tarantino bloodfest."
This is virtuoso stuff. What's brilliant - and important and true -about the Sun's take on opera is that they see no reason to pretend that it's a polite, elegant, decorative artform - they are determined to communicate that it is dirty, dangerous, sexy and nasty. Which in my view, is spot on. Good for them. I even forgive them their rather hilarious attack on "elitist broadsheet the Guardian ... blow them. They can have a night in with thier mung bean sandwiches and discuss existentialist feminism. We'll be down at the opera having a knees-up".
Best of all, is the "easy-to-understand guide to dirty Don", a true masterpiece which you can read in full here - with a challenge to Guardian readers to come up with even better Sun-style plot precis of other operas. It begins:
"DON GIOVANNI is a pretty nasty type - but for some reason he has still managed to amass a string of lovers across Europe.
Think Dirty Den, Richard Hillman and Russell Brand rolled into one - then multiply by ten.
SEX PEST STRIKES IN SUNNY SPAIN
His sidekick and servant Leporello - a slightly smarter and more hygienic version of Baldrick from Blackadder - is always keeping watch on his filthy boss and his depraved deeds.
Giovanni is in Spain near the Costa Del Sol and is up to his appalling tricks again.
Disguised in a mask, he attempts to rape a woman named Donna Anna."
Think you can do better?
