This week I did something that I've always wanted to do in London but just never got around to. And I did it twice!
I'm talking about going to the Opera. I absolutely love opera, so when I first arrived in London, I went to see La Boheme at the London Colisseum, and I was soooo bitterly disappointed! This is because the performance was conducted by the English National Opera, and their thing is to sing the opera in English, no matter what. This is completely stupid. If an opera is written in a specific language, it should be sung in that language. Plus, English is the worst possible language for opera - with all that warbling, you have a snowflakes chance in hell of figuring out what they're harping on about. Suffice to say I was not impressed.
But I don't think I can blame that poor experience on my laziness in getting to see the Royal Opera at the Royal Opera House. I think its kind of like being a tourist in your own city - you never do it. It's there, I can go whenever I want, so I don't go. So this week I decided finally to take the plunge and NIKE! Just do it...
Now the first thing about the Royal Opera is that the tickets range from the extremely reasonable to the extremely absurd. For example, for The Rake's Progress, which is the opera we saw, the price range was from £6 to £556 per ticket! As it was we ended up in the amphitheatre for £43, the cheapest tickets still available. But I have to say, I don't care that it cost £43, I don't even care that it was Stravinsky and so not the opera I would've really wanted to see - it was just amazing! What an awesome experience! To quote Melissa, when we went to see Turandot at the Sydney Opera House for her 21st birthday - "I don't know if I can go back to being a pleb after that!"
The Opera House is just enormous. We thought that actually we had really good seats, because when you looked out at the stage, it looked really close to you - that's because you're used to other theatres where the stage is actually smaller - but then you're sitting closer, right, as the theatre is smaller - so all things being relative this stage looked enormous and we thought we were right there - til they opened up the curtain and the people literally looked really tiny! I mean, you could see everything alright, but no chance at seeing facial expressions or anything. Fortunately I'd brought my binoculars with me so we got to see quite a lot.
It was just a beautiful experience and one I will not forget ever. I have to say that although it was Stravinsky, and there is no way I could ever remember any of the tunes (to be honest there weren't any) - I just loved every minute of it. And even though the opera was written in English, I was very glad they still had the surtitles, because opera singers being the warblers they are, you just wouldn't have understood it any other way.
So that was a lovely experience. Then, two days later, they were showing live broadcasts from the Opera House on big screens set up by BP all over the country, one of which was in Trafalgar Square. So, seeing as the opera was Le Nozze Di Figaro, and seeing as I really like that opera and if there had've been tickets, would've seen that instead of The Rake's Progress, I decided to go. I brought along a little picnic of sushi and headed off for Trafalgar Square. Unfortunately, by the time I got there it was absolutely packed! This meant that I had to position myself off towards the side, in front of one of the fountains, but I luckily had a pretty good view. Well, at least I did until literally dozens of people kept walking past, staring at the screen as if to say 'What on earth is this?' and then stopping directly in front of me. I got so sick of it I actually said something - and then they were most apologetic - but what is it about people that they get so pre-occupied with something that their peripheral vision doesn't allow them to take in the surroundings and therefore realise that they are blocking someone? So bizzare...
I managed to stay for the first two acts but got so cold sitting there on the concrete that I had to leave at the interval. But what an awesome experience....
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