Boffo in the Buff

Some kind of night at the opera

It is not an everyday event for a woman to rise topless from a large cauldron in Memphis. But when Cheryllynn Ross did so last week as Hecate during the New York-based Metropolitan Opera touring performance of Macbeth, she was risking more than a chill: the city's tough new antinudity ordinance, aimed chiefly at topless dancers, could have brought quick arrest. Two division commanders of the local police were on the scene. Would they rush the cauldron and haul its contents off to the slammer?

Well, no. But as the curtain went up a stir in the back of the first balcony proved almost as dramatic. At a cry of "Bravo!"--"Brava!" would have been more correct--20 men and women bared their chests and held up candles, lighters and flashlights so that their fellow opera lovers in the audience of 2,360 could catch their act. All were members of an antiordinance group called MASH (Memphians Against Social Harassment), formed last month by Memphis Restaurateur Paul Savarin to combat MAD (Memphians Against Degeneracy), the pro-ordinance lobby. Rudi E. Scheidt, president of the Memphis group that sponsors the Met visit each year, called the protest "a hell of an embarrassment to Memphis." But most citizens took the incident in stride. Carey Wong, of Opera Memphis, was rhapsodic: "It was a lovely gesture, a captivating moment." David Reuben, spokesman for the Met tour, suggested that if the Met could survive the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, where it performed Carmen with Caruso, it would probably survive the topless tremors in Tennessee too.

To many Memphis residents, upset by the proliferation of adult bookstores and topless nightclubs, MAD is not out of its mind. But even though Police Director John Holt insisted after the protest that the ordinance would still be enforced, he announced his own surprise: three high-ranking police officers on duty that night were put on suspension, without pay, two of them for being in the vicinity of the opera hall against orders. MASH jumped back into the fray with a declaration that policemen, like all other citizens, are entitled to go to the opera. As for MAD, perhaps it could expand to meet the new crisis, possibly forming new groups called Memphians Against Damsels Doing Ecdysiast Routines (MADDER), Memphians Against Chest Hair at Operas (MACHO) or, to honor the Met, Memphians Against Culture Buffs Exposing Themselves Heedlessly (MACBETH). This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.