They detected I'm in Belgium and gave me google.be results. They even changed my Blogger options so I had to choose between "Blog maken" and "Aanmelden" to make this post! Auuugh! I feel so geotargeted.
Anyway, I wanted to write about my weekend, mostly undistinguished except for significant stomach troubles and a glorious trip to the opera to see Handel's "Giulio Cesare in Egitto". My 10 euro ticket got me entrance to a lovely small European-style opera house, and my legs got me up the stairs to my seat. Along the way I bought an 8 euro program that consisted of two beautifully bound books, one filled with the synopsis in four languages (the Brussels standards of French and Dutch, plus English and German, super-bonus!) and about 4 different articles about Handel and the opera in French and Dutch, and bilingual cast biographies; and the other with the libretto in the original Italian, French, and Dutch. What a bargain!
From my seats I couldn't even see the supertitles, but they wouldn't have helped anyway. They were in French and Dutch, of course! Thankfully I'd done some research online and knew the gist of things. The music was truly beautiful, and the production what my Dad would call "eurotrash" - very modern, and stark, and black-and-white. Super-bonus: there were three counter-tenors onstage that night, instead of the predicted two, each with a distinct style and carriage. Neat stuff. It's very incongruous for modern audiences to hear such high-pitched voices and think of them of heroic; we're just conditioned otherwise. Audiences invariably titter when they first open their mouths. And then stop, if the singing is good enough.
Since my stomach had been a bit touchy all day, I contented myself with a quick waffle snack before the performance. Waffles and opera, a good day!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment