A few days ago my lovely curly-headed roommate and I went on a spur of the moment culture field trip. As I was wandering aimlessly through the student society building, I ran into an extremely excited francophone woman who wanted to share with me the joys of the opera. I love the opera - at least what I had seen and heard up to this point. My previous opera experiences included an opera course taught at a castle in England, Rigoletto at The Royal Opera in London, and Don Giovanni at The Royal Opera. Tuesday was student night, which meant we could get tickets for 25$ each, a steal if you ask me. What did we get to see? Puccini's little known opera La Fanciulla del West, or, in English, The Girl of the Golden West.
It was not at all what I expected.
After dining at a favorite spot of ours, Cafe l'etranger, we headed to Place des Arts, still in our school attire and carrying our bags of books. There really wasn't time at all for us to go home and change, plus we thought it was student night, so there would be students there dressed like us. There were some young people in jeans carrying backpacks, but mostly it was older people wearing very nice clothing. Fortunately for them, our tickets were in the Balcon Impair, which meant we had to climb some stairs. Then climb some more stairs. The higher up we got, the surlier the ushers and the unclassier the decor. Eventually the stairway resembled somewhat of a carpeted emergency exit. Still, we had some pretty good seats on the edge of the balcony.
Behind us, however, were two student girls very much unlike us. My roomy and I were trained in the way of performance viewing, perhaps from our musical performance backgrounds. These girls, however, are the people you hate at the movie theatre. EVERYTHING required a comment or a giggle from them. EVERYTHING. While sometimes this was funny, like when the main character was really obviously cheating at cards by pulling them out of her sock and they had a discussion about whether or not she was cheating. Of course there were times when the ongoing not-quit-whispered dialogue was not funny, like when they talked about how they had never been to the opera before and they can't hear what anyone is saying and what's that and who's that and where are they going and when was this written and she looks stupid....etc.
Now you might be thinking, with a climactic card game scene, characters with strong names like Minnie, Jack Rance, and Dick Johnson (actual lines from the opera: "Dick! Forever Dick!" and "I'm tired of looking for your Johnson!"...probably not as funny in Italian) how could this opera go wrong? I admit that it was not at all what I expected and there seem to be some serious plot flaws, but I rather enjoyed it. Was it one of my favorite operas? Not even close. But I am happy that I saw it. In fact, I recommend you go see it right now. I'm sure your library has a recording.
And that was Ivy's night of cultured activities.
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