Lluís Pasqual, uno de los fundadores del Teatre Lliure y su nombre más reconocido e internacional, no estará presente en la programación del 50 aniversario del colectivo, presentada hoy junto con el resto de la temporada. El Lliure ha descabalgado a Pasqual pese a que estaba comprometida su presencia como director de un espectáculo, y lo ha hecho aduciendo una grabación falsa de unas palabras de Montserrat Caballé que se emitieron en la gala de homenaje a la soprano en 2019 en el Liceo, según desveló recientemente la humorista Judit Martín, verdadera autora de la grabación.
Used to hearing Antony Beevor detail troop movements at Stalingrad, the siege of Berlin, the Normandy landings, the paratroopers’ effort at Arnhem or the Panzer offensive in Hitler’s last stand in the Ardennes, it is surprising to hear him talk about Rasputin’s penis. In truth, he adopts the same look of intense concentration he brings to his usual military topics. “Rasputin’s penis… is an object of interest, certainly,” he says when his interlocutor mentions that, during an afternoon of astonishment and vodka, he saw on display in a St. Petersburg museum the appendage shown as such in a glass jar. “Yes, it is said to measure 13 inches, about 33 centimeters, but I don’t know that it’s something to take seriously. My father-in-law, the historian John Julius Norwich, used to explain that his father, Duff Cooper, the first British ambassador to France after the Liberation and also a historian [and father of the notable writer Artemis Cooper, Beevor’s wife], was convinced that part of Rasputin’s sexual success and magnetism lay in his member and his muscular control, but there is no historical record that it was cut off after his murder. Today it is impossible to assert that what is on display is his; I don’t believe any DNA test has been done.” In fact, some say it is a horse’s penis, or, if not that, a dried sea cucumber, as has also been suggested. Beevor recalls, in any case, that at the time in Tsarist Russia, Rasputin was credited with extraordinary sexual potency and caricatures circulated showing his organ, in reference to the monk’s influence over the Tsarina Alexandra and, through her, Tsar Nicholas II, with the legend: “The rod that rules Russia.”
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