Is New York ready for an ugly Baroque swamp nymph?

By Michael Roddy PARIS (Reuters) – German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld is a household name; But the two have been doing quite well together in a European opera now heading briefly to New York. Two hundred and fifty years after Rameau’s death, a revival of his 1745 opera “Platee” about an unsightly swamp nymph who falls for the god Jupiter – dressed in Lagerfeld-like black and cradling a white cat resembling the designer’s prized “Choupette” – is to have a one-night stand in the Big Apple this week after successful runs in Vienna and Paris. “The theatre of the 17th and 18th century has a real harmony with our period, it’s very edgy,” Canadian director Robert Carsen, who dreamt up the fashionista-themed production of “Platee”, said in a telephone interview from Zurich.