El and I went to the Lyric Opera tonight to see Cavalerria Rusticana and Pagliacci. It was my first time at the opera so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. “I just hope the opera snobs don’t look down on me,” I kept telling her in the weeks building up (she’s been looking forward to this for a bit).
Dinner was at 1 North, just across the street. We valet parked the car and felt quite high class. Of course, since the Golf really doesn’t compare to the Mercedes and Jags that the older operagoers were driving, they actually pulled the car away instead of leaving it outside. Dinner was good, although one could really tell that many of the patrons were also opera patrons since everyone made rustling gestures 20 minutes before curtain and put the waitress in a serious tizzy.
The opera was much like a musical, except everything was musical. And in supertitles. And even more melodramatic (even more than Strike Up the Band? Oh yes, Pip). I took some time to warm up to it. During the prelude to Cavalerria, while the orchestra played and a man sang offstage, there was just this screen projection with some trees. I sat there, reading the supertitles and thinking, “I thought that the opera had acting… maybe this is how real opera is… why does everyone have opera glasses then, to see the conductor?”
But then the screen lifted and everything looked marvellous. The sets and costumes were some of the best I’ve seen. Even from our upper balcony seats, I could appreciate the detail in the production. El said that the soprano was really great, so I’m just going to trust her judgment.
I also trusted her to let me know when to clap. See, the last concert we went to told us to only clap at the end. You can clap in the middle of operas, but only if the music takes a break. Or something. I didn’t get the rhyme or reason, but thankfully everyone else had a cue card and I could just follow along. There was definitely one point where only one person way in the back was clapping and then got shushed. Perhaps they were trying to start a trend…
Speaking of shushing, the lady behind us was hilarious. During one of the applause segments, the woman next to El made a comment to her mother in the seat next to her and the lady behind said, “Be quiet!”
“I wasn’t talking,” the other woman said, before realizing that now she indeed was talking and in serious breach of the opera code (which also doesn’t allow fidgeting, much to the dismay of my hyperactive knee).
During intermission, we read our programs to figure out what we’d just seen (just kidding, the supertitles and acting let me follow things pretty well) and the peoplewatched. Once again, we were the among the youngest people there.
The musicians in the pit started warming up and the lady behind us said, “That’s a rather large orchestra.”
Woman next to El said, “Be quiet!” triumphantly to which Back Lady replied, “The music hasn’t started yet.” Your kung fu is inferior!
Pagliacci started with an opening song to the audience in front of the curtain sans supertitles. I’d just gotten dependent on the things and they yanked em away, as if to say, “Learn Italian. Now.” The curtain lifted and wow, they’d managed to turn the Italian plaza (piazza, yeah, screw you, supertitles) into a more modern town square with a dirt floor. Pagliacci also had clown on stilts and large rubber balls. Juggling clowns. Fire dancing clowns. Oh, and a homicidal killer clown with a knife, just in time for Halloween.
I was pretty into the opera by this point. If I were in it, I’d definitely want to be Beppe. I know how it feels, being on the outside, trying to keep the show going as all this drama is going on around it. All those years of high school theater…
As soon as the double knifing and psychedelic light show on mad Pagliacci happened (I called it “kaleidocrazy”) and the curtain fell, all these opera people started booking for the hills, I mean the valet. I thought that was pretty rude (both next to El Woman and Back Lady zipped out) to leave before applauding. We paid for our courtesy by having to wait 20 minutes for the valet to come with the car, but it was a nice night.
Last bit of fun people observation was from this lady who was watching the valet saying, “If all the keys are sitting there in that box, how-? Oh, I see, he hands the keys to the man. I get it.”
So, do I get the opera? Sure, it’s a show! It’s not the completely high brow affair I was expecting (I mean, we watched a double knifing!). And it was nice to get dressed up and go for a formal night out. And most importantly, I’m no longer afraid of opera snobs.