Overall, I really enjoyed Contes D’Hoffman. It was the first opera I’ve been to and it was amazing. It totally contradicted any preconceived notions I had about opera. I pictured opera as being on an empty, brown stage, with a fat woman standing in the middle screaming at the top of her lungs while the audience snored. The Metropolitan Opera could not have been further from what I pictured. The theater was just beautiful- I loved how the room was so big and bright and the chandeliers that beautifully hung overhead magically disappeared into the ceiling when the opera started. I especially loved that massive gold curtain. My favorite part of the opera may have been every time when the curtain opened. The color and draping was just really pretty.
The performance itself was a major contrast from how I imagined it. The stage was as far from the blah brown table I imagined it to be. I loved the spectacle of it all- everything was big and bright and completely over the top. I loved the old-fashioned ball gowns some women were wearing as well as the funny crowns the robots wore. The first act was the easiest to follow, but that might have been because we read it in our Series packet. It was just confusing how one minute the robot was dancing and singing and the next second someone brought her on stage in pieces, because I never saw her go off stage. I think that might have been because in what we read there was only one robot talked about, but in the opera there were many identical robots.
I also liked how crazy and unbelievable the plot was. At some points I found myself thinking “this is so stupid, there’s no way that could happen”, but most of the time I liked it because it was just so out there, like a completely different world. Like Alice in Wonderland, they create these crazy plots that don’t make sense, but I love them anyway.
I thought the best singer was the second woman, Antonia. At times in the second act I just closed my eyes and listened to the music. While my initial reason for closing my eyes was because I was tired, once they were closed I was better able to appreciate the singing and music because I wasn’t distracted by the spectacle I enjoyed so much.
I think the reason the opera doesn’t appeal to people our age is because they, like me, have all these preconceived notions of how boring and awful the opera will be. Another reason they might not like it is because it is sung in a different language. That didn’t bother me because a) I don’t think I would have understood even if they sung it in English and b) I had a lot of fun putting on Spanish subtitles and seeing how much I could understand. And even though I didn’t understand all the words, I understood enough to get the general idea of what was going on.
I was also really excited to catch an actor doing the “park and bark”, so I kept looking out for that and whispering loudly to my neighbors “oh look! I think they’re doing the park and bark.”
Overall I had a good time and wouldn’t even mind going again. It was a really exciting night out. The only thing I would say is that I feel the opera was a bit too long- three and a half hours and two intermissions!! Are there always two intermissions so the actors can rest their voices, or was it only for this performance to break up the 3 stories of the 3 women?
Oh and can I just say my favorite part might have been finding the people dressed in ball gowns to come see the opera?? They got so fancy in gowns and fur coats and so elegant, while we, or at least I, was so not. It was fun taking pictures of them for the photojournal.
