On 20 September 1973, about 90 million people turned on their televisions to watch the “Battle of the Sexes” – a tennis match between the loudly chauvinist former men’s champion Bobby Riggs and the reigning women’s No 1, Billie Jean King. She arrived on a litter carried by topless men; he on a rickshaw drawn by female models. He presented her with a novelty-size lollipop. She handed him a piglet.
“The Battle of the Sexes was always an opera,” says composer Laura Karpman in the programme for the world premiere of the orchestral version of her stage work Balls. At its subtlest, the opera gets straight to the heart of how alien that real event now seems. Incorporating video clips of adverts and near-verbatim quotes of the 1973 TV commentary – virtuosically delivered as a kind of slow rap by actor Emma Kennedy in a wig, sideburns and shades – Karpman’s score transforms the shock of cigarettes “tailored for the feminine hand” and female athletes greeted as “little lady” into all-singing all-dancing kitsch.
