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As promised, I am updating more frequently! I still have some things I want to say about the time when I wasn't writing, but for now we're going to jump to the present day. I think my next entry will go back and talk about some things that I've done. But for now, I will talk about.... Opera.
I've never seen a whole Opera. I wasn't sure how I felt about them... I'm still not sure. A lot of them are in Italian, and I've taken some Italian. In case you didn't know, one of my pipe dreams is that I will one day be able to move to Italy and live there, drinking wine and eating food. But for now, I don't really understand it. I like visual things, though, so I wonder if I would be able to follow the story of an opera (in Italian) just by movements, facial expressions and intonation (and maybe a brief summary of what is going on). Thus far, though, it's something that I just haven't had a chance to experience.
Last night I got a brief taste, though. Elenka invited me to her concert, which was put on by the New England Conservatory School of Continuing Education. The concert was called "An Evening of Opera Scenes," and had six scenes from six different operas. There were scenes from The Secret Marriage, Don Giovanni, L'Incoronazione di Poppea, Carmen, Regina and A Hand of Bridge. I really enjoyed this little taste of opera. The costumes and staging were simple, and it was a small little theatre. They started off with scenes in English, then did a few in Italian (but giving us an explanation of what was going on) and ended with English again. It was a new experience to see something acted out (almost) entirely in song, and I really enjoyed the contrast between the female soprano and the male bass. The last three I found to be particularly enjoyable. The scene from Carmen was an aria, which I thought was excellent. The Regina scene (which was the one Elenka was in last night) started off with a quartet, singing happily and contently about the rain, and then switched rather quickly to one of the characters, Birdie, lamenting about her horrible life. And the last one, A Hand of Bridge, was really rather fun, with two couples playing bridge, then launching into their own individual arias, and they were truly unredeeming characters - but that made it all the more enjoyable. Overall, I thought that the singing was rather good, and as it turns out, I can barely understand the English, so it probably doesn't matter if I see something in English or Italian!
Maybe the next thing will be an entire opera. But I might want to start with something in English - at least I'll be able to pull out a few words.
- Lizzardie, at 10:30 AM
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