kethrai's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Adventures in Time--In Which A Very Young Kethrai Attends The Opera Adventures in Time--In Which A Very Young Kethrai Attends The Opera
I'd gone to live theater my entire life. My folks believe in live theater--my mom in particular loved musicals--and there are lots of exciting things and wonderful things about live theater, including dressing up to show respect for the actors, getting to sit in fancy chairs, and the particular magic that live theater has that can't be quantified but only experienced. I had, at that point, seen The Music Man, lots of Shakespeare, and other plays and musicals and really, really adored them. I had also read about opera. Opera is fascinating, historically. As much as I hate to cop to liking ANY Anne Rice book, Cry To Heaven remains one of my favorites. I adore the description of the costumes, the descriptions of the voice training, the magic of greasepaint and bright lights and fabulous, heavenly music that permeates that book. I loved every damn thing about opera, including the skill it takes to sing it and the larger than life personalities of those who do. So I took Jenny-Jenny's spare ticket, dressed in my finest because that is one does to go to live theater, and hied myself across campus to hear Il Ritorno De Ulysse by the Texas Opera Company. I...was....fascinated. I had a libretto in both Italian and English, and was thrilled by the topic. I've loved the Odyssey since I was four, and the story was fabulous. I read through the libretto in English, recognizing old friends amongst the characters. I compared it to the Italian, to see how much of the Italian I could suss out. I compared the costumes on the performers to my memories of Theater Convention in Cry To Heaven trying to figure out which century they had moved to, and suffered severe fabric envy. I observed technique of gesture and form, and looked to see how the staging was accomplished with regards to how things were done in the story of the Odyssey, and I also did the obligatory sussing-out-of-other-folks that one does at the theater, my 20-year-old self noting with extreme disapproval that No One Dresses For The Theater Anymore. I managed to do all this despite the absolute worst, ungodly, horrible caterwauling I had ever heard in my life emerging from the singers on stage. And despite all my best efforts at keeping myself entertained, and despite all I managed to accomplish, and despite my mother's early training in Live Theater And How One Does Things, I fled in disarray at the interval. Retired across campus to my dorm room and spent a satisfying evening blasting James Cotton and Hank Williams (senior, of course) to clean my ears. And when Jenny-Jenny, the next day, was exclaiming at the Extreme Rudeness of all of the audience melting away during the interval, I wisely and prudently kept my mouth shut. I still adore the notion of opera, now, nearly 20 years later. I re-read Cry to Heaven and other books about opera, and adore the history and the description of the music and the theatrical conventions and everything else about opera except, well, opera itself. I remain a philistine, despite my best efforts. And you can join me, for either Chicago or My Fair Lady or Victor/Victoria or even some Mississippi River delta-style blues, but if Jenny-Jenny got to you, too, and you have some free tickets, please tell me about it when you get back. I'll even lend you my libretto. 8:12 p.m. - 2006-01-07 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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