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Geopolitics

Death Toll Rising After Pakistan Election Rally Blast

AFP, ALJAZEERA (Qatar), PAK TRIBUNE (Pakistan), REUTERS, ZEE NEWS (India)

Worldcrunch

KURRUM - The death toll from a bombing at a political rally near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border has increased to at least 25 as of Tuesday morning, making it the deadliest attack to date on the current national election campaign, says the AFP.

The explosion occurred when a device detonated at a rally for two Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) candidates, who, according to Aljazeera, escaped unhurt. An estimated 70 people were injured in the blast, writes India’s Zee News.

Dr. Inayatullah Khan, the administrator of a nearby hospital, said 20 bodies and 65 injured were brought to the hospital, quotes the Pak Tribune. He said some tribesmen took bodies of their relatives to their villages instead of bringing them to the hospital.

The Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for the bombing, reports the Tribune, saying that the target was one of the candidates who supported operations against the militants. The group added that party activists were not targets.

Since April, reports Reuters, the group has killed more than 70 people in attacks targeting three major political parties, preventing many candidates from openly campaigning.

This has been the first deadly attack on a political party in this region since campaigning began for what will be the country’s first democratic transition of power after a civilian government has completed a full term of office. Elections are due to be held May 11.

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LGBTQ Plus

Bravo! Brava! Opera's Overdue Embrace Of Trans Performers And Storylines

Opera has played with ideas of gender since its earliest days. Now the first openly trans performers are taking to the stage, and operas explicitly exploring trans identities are beginning to emerge.

A photograph of Lucia Lucas singing with a lance, dressed in a black gown.

September 2022: Lucia Lucas performing at the opera

Lucia Lucas/Facebook
Von Manuel Brug

BERLIN — The figure of the nurse Arnalta is almost as old as opera itself. In Claudio Monteverdi’s saucy Roman sex comedy The Coronation of Poppaea, this motherly confidante spurs the eponymous heroine on to ever more lustful encounters, singing her advice in the voice of a tenor. The tradition of a man playing an older woman in a comic role can be traced all the way back to the comedies of the ancient world, which Renaissance-era writers looked to for inspiration.

The Popes in Baroque Rome decreed that, supposedly for religious reasons, women should not sing on stage. But they still enjoyed the spectacular performances of castratos, supporting them as patrons and sometimes even acting as librettists. The tradition continues today in the form of celebrated countertenors, and some male sopranos perform in female costume.

“I don’t know what I am, or what I’m doing.” This is how the pageboy Cherubino expresses his confusion at the flood of hormones he is experiencing in his aria in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro – one of the most popular operas of all time, full of amorous adventures and sexual misunderstandings. Cherubino cannot and does not want to choose between a countess, a lady’s maid, and a gardener’s daughter. He sometimes wears women’s clothing himself, and in modern productions the music teacher even chases after the young man.

The role of Cherubino, the lustful teenager caught between childhood and manhood, someone who appears trapped in the "wrong
body, is traditionally performed by a woman, usually a mezzosoprano. The audience is used to this convention, also seen in Richard Strauss’s Rosenkavalier or Siegfried Matthus’s Cornet Christoph Rilke’s Song of Love and Death, first performed in 1984.

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