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Mikelangelo & The Black Sea Gentlemen at The Opera House
// 23rd June
On the weekend I went to the Opera House and saw Mikelangelo & The Black Sea Gentlemen. I first heard about them when Unkle Ho (of The Herd) remixed their track A Formidable Marinade on an Elefant Traks remix album. It turns out that Mikelangelo & The Black Sea Gentlemen are a kind of cabaret troupe, who profess to sing songs and tell stories about death and comic tragedy and tell tales from far away places such as Transylvania, the Balkans, and the Adriatic.
Mikelangelo is a beefy man (and you get to see most of him, as by the end of the show he was in his underwear), who sings baritone. He started in some kind of ruffled shirt, looking like he was an Elvis impersonator (from a time long before Elvis was around), before switching shirts once, and then appearing in his underwear, which also kept the old-style aesthetic going. The Black Sea Gentlemen are Rufino the Catalan Casanova on violin, Little Ivan (pronounced ‘Ee-vahn’) on double bass, Guido Libido on piano-accordion, and The Great Muldavio on clarinet. They all switched instruments when necessary, and each member got a turn at the spotlight to sing a little ditty or tell a tale. Between cracking jokes at the expense of the others, and pulling a comb out of his pocket to fix his hair, Mikelangelo strutted around like nobody’s business, sometimes piggybacking his bandmates around, sometimes harassing audience members, sometimes even jumping up on the tables to dance and tip people’s wine glasses over his own head.
The best parts of the show were the humour, which is maintained throughout; the aesthetic, which is never broken–they all look the part down to the last detail; and the clever songs and storytelling. Even seeing Little Ivan walk out of the Opera House after the show with a beer in his hand and three more shoved into his jacket pockets (classy) didn’t make me any less impressed with them.
Their MySpace profile has an unfortunately limited number of songs you can listen to, but it’s worth a few minutes of your time.
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