Again With The Trench Coats

Blogger Opera Chic has up a few TV screenshots from the Patrice Chéreau staging for La Scala’s new production of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. And there they are again. Those ubiquitous, bloody stupid trench coats so beloved of Eurotrash directors.

If anyone can provide me informed explanation as to why that singularly inappropriate bit of costuming has taken such unshakeable hold of Eurotrash directors’ and designers’, um, imagination seemingly in every new production of any opera whatsoever sans any dramatic or time-and-place call for such a garment, I would be eternally grateful.