November 6, 2010
-
Today's "go somewhere" was to see a movie of a Metropolitan Opera live performance of the first of four operas in the Ring series. I had seen different versions before so I knew the plot. This is useful, considering the opera is in German and the subtitles are in Japanese. We got fancy tickets and got to wait in a fancy room, drink fancy tea and sit on fancy seats. The next fancy installment "Die Walkure" next June, but hubby wants to get tickets already. After the opera was lunch at a ramen shop that played noise that was quite a bit lower on the evolutionary scale from what we had just been listening to. Next was a walk in Hanazono Shrine and after that Shinjuku Gyoen Park, where we used to hang out when we lived in Shinjuku. It is nice to have a forest in the middle of Tokyo. Supper was leftover pizza, which was not fancy, but just fine with me.
Comments (6)
I've been dying to see one of those operas!
@Ufbad - Haha! I know you are a big fan of Wotan!
Yeah, but I don't even know the plot, unfortunately. I guess I could always read it off wiki, but that doesn't seem the same...
Seriously, it stands a very good chance that we'll be seeing this show live too. How crazy is that???
@Ufbad - Really? Wow, who is singing? The version that we say was fairly classical costumewise. The "Tokyo Ring" stage at the New National Theater has Wotan dressed up like a gangster and later Siegfried is made to look like an overweight kindergartener. It is cool how this entire series begins with just one note at the bottom of the Rhine. The banging and clanging of Niebelheim is also a good, and I like Loge's fire leitmotiv. I don't believe that Alberich falls for such a simple trick.
http://www.fathomevents.com/opera/event/walkure.aspx
@Ufbad - Yes, that is the same series! The link that you sent is for "Walkuere" (I am not sure where my umlauts are on this keyboard) the second opera in the Ring. Hubby is already jumping up and down for tickets, but I don't think I can get them yet. The opera that we just saw was for the first in the series. This is all pretty heavy stuff and I usually end up taking an unwilling nap during the parts where there is not a lot of action on the stage. Walkuere is five hours. I hope there is an intermission in all this Olympic singing or I will have to not drink anything the day of the showing.
Comments are closed.