The opera last night was fabulous. I love spending the evening letting myself get lost in a story played out before me by people playing the part. I love how fast it seems that characters can fall in love, that they can sing so beautifully and with such eloquence about that love. How wonderful would it be to get to fall in love every night you preform? Though, for the principle characters last night, such love was not to be found. The stage manager, who did the pre-show talk, told us the main emphasis was upon Fate, and how Tchaikovsky was using Puskin's poem (as a huge romantic sentiment) to basically suggest that Fate and Destiny mock the true love of the characters. The costumes and set design were awesome, because that is more my area of expertise with the art history and costume background anyway, I was truly transported...the dancing was well done and Emily did a great job in the ensemb. The only weakness was very slight, in the voice of the mez0-soprano playing Olga, the sister. However, given IU"s ability to produce and cultivate a great vocal music program, it was just that, slight. I must also say how much I miss playing the french horn, but on the same token, how much I enjoy listening to people that can play it well. There were some gorgeous horn solos in this opera. I love how easily the horn can blend with a string section. Some really great moments when you can get caught up in the thoughts and feelings of the characters as they lament, or follow the social decorum of the day, are echoed wonderfully in the accompanying orchestrations. I can imagine it is extremly hard to sing opera in English. The number of consonants in our language, and the factor of not having nearly as many gorgeous long true vowel sounds, as they do in Italian or say, french. I wonder what the opera would have sounded like in Russian. Regardless, it was a lovely and entertaining evening, and I had a great time getting transported to the world of the Russian countryside, and St. Petersburg. Once transported, I had a wonderful time letting the opera take hold and effectively got lost in the genuine love of characters expressed with such purity of voice.
Today is rainy. The type of rain, that when you wake up to it, you simply want to stay in bed all day, wrapped in your warm comforter and go back to sleep and dream more of princes and love in the countryside. Alas, for me, princes aren't in the cards, instead it's off to the library for 524 encyclopedia work, but perhaps we'll go and get our pumpkins today, though it's not as much fun to pick them in the rain....