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WEDNESDAY
When Stravinsky decided to turn Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex into an “opera-oratorio,” he mixed things up real good: He used Jean Cocteau’s version of the playfully translated into Latinand specified that the performers wear masks. That wasn’t eclectic enough for Julie Taymor, though. When she staged the piece at a Japanese arts festival in 1992, she combined design motifs from both ancient Japanese and Cycladean (proto-Greek) cultures and put huge masks atop the heads of the singers, who included Jessye Norman and Bryn Terfel. In addition, she split the role of Oedipus between a singer and a dancer and provided elaborate visual metaphors of sun, water, blood, corruption, and purification. If this scheme all sounds like way too much…well, that’s the director’s trademark. Like Taymor’s other work, the Emmy-winning film of her eclectic Oedipus may have too much on its mind, but it will certainly boggle the eyes. It screens at 7 p.m. at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1250 New York Ave. NW. $7. (202) 783-7373. (Mark Jenkins)