Attending the Metropolitan Opera House to see Tosca was an experience that I never had before. It was a very rewarding experience, because I had the chance to relate material that I learned in my music class to my understanding and analysis of the opera. There were many aspects of the opera and opera house that I enjoyed. For example, The Metropolitan Opera House was very grandiose and elegant, with six floors of audiences watching the opera. The audience was elegant themselves, because everyone had on business attire, so I didn’t see anyone wearing jeans that night. The way everyone was talking during the intermissions was like nothing I’ve seen before, because usually, especially at movie theaters are excited, talking loudly, and all over the place. The calm mannerisms and soft tones of politeness was a first-timer for me, and I believe that is partly due to the “proper” attire everyone had on that night. During the intermissions, I discovered that food prices downstairs were extremely expensive. I saw people having dinner on the upper levels of the opera house, and noticed how finely dressed they were. The food didn’t even look like it was worth a few hundred dollars, but then I found out the people eating dinner weren’t watching the opera; they came just for the dining experience. I was amazed at the sight of the people that were there that night, and couldn’t even believe that they were spending so much money.

The stage was the biggest stage I have ever seen, and the costumes, lighting, and orchestra was grand. My seat was in the eighth row right in front of the stage, so I got to see everything, from the expressions on the character’s faces to the details on the costumes.  The conductor for the orchestra was standing right front of the audience facing the stage, watching the characters and lip-singing the libretto as well. The orchestra was on a lower level than the audience and conductor, blocked off with glass windows so the audience couldn’t see them and the stage at the same time. I was really curious to know what kind of instruments I was hearing, because during the first half of the show, it was difficult to know if I was hearing a harp or a piano, a French horn or a clarinet, a violin or other string instrument. So during the second intermission, I went to the where the conductor stood, and looked down to see what kind of instruments were being played. To my surprise, I saw a big harp, a small drum set (most likely a tympani), clarinets, trumpets, the flute, the oboe, a French horn, and several violins and violas.

I hope to see more operas in the future!

Bonjour, tout le monde!

On our class visit to the Museum of Modern Art, I was very interested in the René Magritte exhibition, titled, “The Mystery of the Ordinary” and features his works from 1926-1938. Magritte was one of the famous Surrealism painters whose work pointed out the inconsistencies in language and visual representation, characterizing the surrealist movement. The art of the time period that the exhibition focuses on featured violent interpretations and innovative ways of thinking about reality and society.

“An object encounters its image, an object encounters its name.”–René Magritte

The idea that Magritte puts forth in this quote is evident in many of his paintings. One work that captured my attention was titled, “La Clef des songes,” (The Interpretation of Dreams). In the painting, images are paired with words that appear to have no correlation to the image, all except the panel in the lower right hand corner. There, Magritte painted a suitcase and below it, he writes, “the valise,” which is both a French and English word for suitcase. The other panels are all paired with non-sensical words that do not accurately describe the object above them. This interesting juxtaposition of language and image is one of Magritte’s signature ideas: words are constructed by society to describe objects, but the objects do not describe the names. We can name the object “the horse” to be “the door,” and the object would still be the same. (Also interesting to note: this painting is the same one that appears on the cover of the text, “Way of Seeing” by John Berger that we read for class.)

“An object is not so possessed of its name that one cannot find for it another which suits it better.”–René Magritte

Another work that attracted me is one that points out the distinction between painting and sculpture. Entitled, “L’évidence éternelle” (The Eternally Obvious), it depicts five parts of a woman’s body in separate canvases. The message behind the work was that this series of five paintings were blurring the lines between painting and sculpture, since it calls to our attention the use of the 3rd dimension outside each individual canvas. Seeing this work brought to my mind our trip to the Rox Gallery to see the exhibit, Delusions, where one of the photographs featured two nudes with lampshades over their heads (Regretfully, I don’t have a picture). In that work, the artist was bringing up the idea of the nude being an object if the face is covered, since it eliminates any special or distinctive properties. Magritte’s “L’évidence éternelle” reminds me of it because in four of the five canvases, the person is unrecognizable, but if seen as a whole, the five canvases form one picture of a unique person.

–Joanna Huang