A night at the Opera...

(to be said in an affected British accent)

Last Friday night, I went to the Opera.

Going to the Opera is something that you hear about other people doing, or you see people on TV do, or you see Looney Toons making fun of the fat lady.
Sometimes when (if??) you flip through radio stations while driving, you're lucky enough to hit the classical station when a fat lady somewhere is hitting some ungodly octave of "Figaro, figaro, FIGARO!"

But when do normal people ever actually go to the opera?  Where does the opera occur?  What motivates them to go?
Well, I went to the opera Friday, March 26th at the Grand Théâtre d'Angers because my friend Anne who also lives in the foyer asked me to go.  Student tickets were only €10, and it sounded like something different to do on a Friday night.
A very brief history of opera:  The first operas were written and performed in Italy toward the end of the 1500s.  The art form caught on in the rest of Europe, with Lully (someone who I vaguely remember from a special topics: Versailles class) a composer, courtesan, and friend of Louis XIV, spearheading the establishment of opera in France.  Blah blah blah.
If you've heard of anyone in the opera world, however, you've definitely heard of Mozart.  He wrote the opera that I saw, Lucio Silla.  It was one of his earliest pieces.
I love wikipedia's plot synopsis: The story concerns the Roman dictator Lucio Silla (Lucius Silla) who lusts after Giunia, the daughter of his enemy Caius Marius. Giunia, on the other hand, loves the exiled senator Cecilio.
That, really, is pretty much it.  Giunia is held captive by Lucio Silla. Cecilio plots with his friend Lucio Cinna.  At the end Lucio Silla surprises everyone and relinquishes Giunna, and everyone lives happily ever after.  Seriously.

Things that were interesting:
Cecilio and his friend Lucio (not the evil Lucio) were both played by women.  The two parts are written for Soprano.  Anne's theory on this is that Mozart was a young man when he wrote the opera, and traditionally young men are played by women (perhaps to distinguish their age by their voice?).  And Cecilio and Lucio C. are young in contrast to the evil dictating Lucio S.

The artistic director went super modern for the set, and it worked surprisingly well.  On the stage there was this giant rotating semi-circular thing.  On one side it was a stone wall with stairs curved around it.  When it turned, the inside was white screens with which they did some cool shadow-y things with light and candle light.  The costume was very 18th century; the male characters were wearing coats with tails, and the women were wearing long dresses with bell shaped sleeves.  It was beautifully put together.  A lot was done with lighting and the color white, which made the stark set interesting.  At one point Giunia was going kind of mad from captivity and the screens behind her lit up with the shadows of people moving around while she was singing.  There was another part where Giunia and Cecilio met in a cemetery.  She was with 15 other women, all wearing white dresses and holding candles.  Very eery and cool.

The singing itself was impressive.  There's not much else I can say about that.  They are all professional singers, and the appropriate emotions were spectacularly conveyed.  Of note, however, was that the opera was in Italian.  So, the theater actually had a subtitle screen above the stage with the French translation.  This was great because I don't think I would have understood what they were saying, even if I spoke Italian. And the lyrics in opera (or at least this one) are surprisingly simple.  Mostly they say things like "You are always my love; I will love you forever..." over and over again.  This made the story very easy to follow.

Finally, it was a whopping 3 hours long.  I really didn't even notice.  There was so much to take in, to see, to hear, that I didn't get restless at all.

On a blogging note: I tried to embed a Looney Toons, Merrie Melodies** video from youtube on this page.    Apparently youtube disabled embedding for that particular video. You can click on "Looney Toons" at the beginning of the post or here is the link for your viewing pleasure:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJAXJWm8G4A

the fat lady sings.

**My fabulous friend Lauren recently shared a Merrie Melodies video with me; I had forgotten all about such things.  I'm glad she reminded me about it because it made this post much better.  Plus who doesn't miss the good old days of Looney Toons dropping anvils on each other's heads?