UnNews:Geordie budgie "sick as a parrot".
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26 March 2009
Berlin, Germany – There were angry scenes in the German capital this evening as opera-goers demanded refunds following the début performance of Sparkie: Cage and Beyond at the Haus der Berliner Taschenspiel. The opera, which features a performance by a Newcastle Blue budgerigar, Sparkie, was the brainchild of Michael Nyman, whose previous works have included Noises, Sounds and Sweet Fanny Adams, Facing Goyim and The Man Who Mistook His Compositions For Music.
Audience members noticed that Sparkie, who rose to fame after winning the BBC reality show Coronation Tweet in the 1950s, wasn't even bothering to mime to the backing track, prompting fears that he had gone to meet the giant bell in the sky. These suspicions were heightened further during a rendition of the aria Who's a Pretty Boy Then? during which Sparkie was observed to hang upside down for several minutes whilst stage crew attempted to staple him back onto his perch.
Despite these technical hitches, promoters refused to refund any patrons, insisting that Sparkie exhibited “beautiful glissandi” and was currently unavailable for interview, as he was “Tired and shagged out following 'is prolonged squawk”.
“He's pining for the dry docks”, said the opera's promoter Yvonne Irene Mann. “He's a Geordie bird through and through, and everyone knows that Geordie birds need to lie down every couple of hours. We keep him in tip-top condition by passing 4 million Volts through him in the dressing room – why do you think he's called 'Sparkie'?”
German opera-lover, Reida Valkyrie, was quick to attack the performance. "Ze budgie vas most clearly dead", she said, "It vas an ex-budgie, he had gone to meet his maker, he had ceased to be. I loved ze rendition of Your Tiny Beak Iz Frozen, but ve Germans do expect our opera to be live, unless ve ourselves have neutralized ze artists. I vish to register a complaint."
Nyman was quick to defend his work. “The purpose of art is to hold a mirror up to life”, he explained, “Sparkie not only does this, but it also looks at it quizzically for a while, bangs its head against it, then pecks at a cuttlefish. It's gritty northern realism at its finest, and to emphasize this we have covered the stage with grit and old copies of The Newcastle Herald .
“The duet Gimme A Kiss is a veritable coup-de-thèatre, and the way Sparkie is able to deliver the lines repeatedly, night after night, is a testament to his professionalism. The final trill is just breath-taking. My next piece, Flogging a Dead Horse serves to emphasis this point, and will feature a live dead horse and actual flogging. Please see my website for details."
Sparkie's fee for the performance has not been disclosed, but it believed that his rider specifies payment in the Spanish Dollar, or “pieces of eight”.
Sources[edit | edit source]
- "A Tweet for Opera Lovers" Times Online, March 26, 2009