Went to The Marriage of Figaro opera at the Sydney Opera House. The singing was amazing. If you’ve never seen an opera, see this one. It is very accessible and understandable. Trust me; this is only my 3rd or 4th opera ever and generally speaking they are like taking cultural medicine. But not this one. It will be a really treasured memory for years to come.
My seats were about 5 rows from the stage… which sounds like fabulous seats and they were excellent for viewing the action and minute details on the stage. But that opera is sung in Italian, and (thankfully) they project the English translation onto a tiny screen high above the stage. So there was a good bit of my craning my neck to look up. In an effort to really see the words and not miss the action, I was slumping so far in my chair that I was practically lying on the floor.
The singing was fantastic, and the costumes were excellent. But they really needed my help in the historical consulting realm. There were so many anachronistic props! They had an electric iron, a metal wheelchair, a salon hair drying contraption, and a plastic “couple” on top of the wedding cake. I’m giving the director the benefit of the doubt that this was a decision rather than a series of oversights. It has to be…. and besides, I was probably the only one who noticed the anachronistic props.
Labels: travel