Category Archives: Reviews

My First Opera Ever!

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It was a Wednesday night and I was all dressed up in my red dress and black shoes. My friends and I walked towards The Metropolitan Opera House. When we finally arrived at the opera house, we saw a mass of people. I took in my surroundings and I found myself surrounded by beautiful lights and a nice dark blue night sky. I took in the view of a lovely fountain with water gushing out from it. It surely was a sight to see and an amazing one at that. I was finally here, here at the opera L’Elisir d’Amore, my first opera ever.

Upon walking in, I noticed the nice light fixtures, the beautifully decorated halls and what I would soon find out, the ubiquitous red velvet. I mean it was everywhere- the stairs, the walls, handles and doors. Pretty much anywhere you could put it, it was there.

Making our way to our seats took quite a while and several flights of stairs. I remember joking about how our seats were so high we could probably touch the ceiling. Turns out I wasn’t wrong. Our seats were dead last all the way at the top, just a few feet, in some cases a few inches, above our heads. Despite this, our seats did offer us a nice view of the whole theater. From our seats, I could see the immensity of the place. Seats lined the sides and the areas down below. It was almost tempting to dive down to the depths below – almost.

The chandeliers and the stage were beautiful. When I first looked at the stage, it was quite deceiving. I didn’t realize how much depth it had until they lifted a screen uncovering a farm village in the background. The scenery was beautiful – the village, the intricately decorated trees and town, the barn with its two floors. The scenes as well as the costumes were vibrant and colorful. I really liked all the different colors of the main characters’ costumes, especially Adina’s red dress and top hat, because I really thought it made them stand out.

I really enjoyed the singing as well. Even from our really high seats, it was really surprising that there was still great acoustics and that I could hear everything they were singing. I may not have understood the exact words that the actors were saying but I could definitely hear what they were singing and the clarity of their words. Their crescendos and decrescendos were impressive. Even when Nemorino, played by Mathew Polenzani, sang really low, I could still hear him singing.

I found the titles on the back of the chair really helpful. They helped me understand what was being said and what was going on in the opera. I liked how we couldn’t see each other’s titles because I think that would have been a little distracting seeing everyone’s words changing. I also found it easy to follow the words. I could read and observe what was going on stage quite easily without missing the action.

I think one of my favorite parts of being at the opera was seeing and watching the orchestra in the pit. I could see each of them playing each note – the string players’ bows moving up and down, and the flute players’ fingers moving. It was all very interesting to watch them. Sometimes I could even single out who was playing the main melody line.

The opera, which has been stereotyped as boring and sleepy, was actually quite refreshing in its liveliness and its comic nature. I especially enjoyed when Doctor Dulcamara was singing about how foolish Nemorino was for taking his elixir. I wasn’t expecting that and I was really surprised with the opera overall because I enjoyed it so much.

Going to the opera for the first time was a truly great and enjoyable experience. I’m glad I had the opportunity, especially the opportunity to go to the opera with my friends. I’ll always remember this experience. Hopefully I’ll get to see another in the future.

Political Mother

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Some would say the way I got to Political Mother should have put a damper on the performance. I forgot my ticket on the train on the way to the performance and my friends and I had get off; I had to run back to my dorm to get it. By the time we got on the train again and headed towards the theater, we were running about 20 minutes late as we rushed towards the signs that said BAM. We entered into one building that we thought was the Howard Gilman Opera House only to find that that building was around the block. As we turned right towards the correct building, we could hear loud, pounding music being played through the metal doors. We weren’t even in the theater yet, but it sounded quite intriguing already.

When we finally got there, we were escorted to our seats, but not the ones we were supposed to sit in. Our seats were actually on the lower level towards the back where we could see everything that was happening on stage. As I settled into the theater, I noticed that there was a dense layer of smoke hanging in the air and flashing lights. The theater was full of people all enraptured by what was occurring on stage and the music that was playing.

On stage, the dancers were already performing with very dramatic movements. Their movements were spastic and erratic as they moved their hands in the air and contorted their bodies this way and that. Despite its erratic nature, I thought the dancers had certain fluidity in their movement as they moved from one position to the next. Sometimes one dancer would start with a move and the rest would join in. It was truly amazing to watch the dancers do all these moves as one unit because the movements seemed so unpredictable. I found it so interesting that they could actually perform them with such coordination. At the same time, each dancer gave way to the music; their bodies were taken over by it. As I watched the dancers, I was just appreciating everything they were doing and asking “How did they do that?”. I kept wondering how they practiced this piece of work and thought, “Wow, those practices must have been very interesting!”

While the dancers were performing, there were other things going on. There were flashing lights that I thought added to the performance; I felt they mirrored the chaotic nature of the dancing. In addition, there was a man yelling into a microphone behind them, along with musicians that played guitar and drums. At times, they were hidden in darkness until the lights flashed and revealed them playing. The man yelling was incomprehensible as he screamed and shouted at the top of his lungs. As he yelled, the dancers continued to make their peculiar movements and seemed in a way controlled by it.

If I had to attribute a meaning to the performance, I would probably do it in light of the title Political Mother. The man yelling and the people playing along with him represent a type of oppression. This oppression, represented through the loud and pounding noise they were spewing out, is very powerful. The people are shown moving with their spastic and chaotic movements, which represent the symptoms of being controlled by this powerful oppression.

Something that I really wasn’t expecting to appear during the performance was the expression “Where there is pressure, there is folk dance”. It added an interesting twist. It was if the performance was telling us when we become too burdened by things, we should revert to our original state of being. We should return to a time before there was any establishment, a time that was more primitive and relied on intuition. This phrase gives us something to think about as we live our busy lives because perhaps sometimes we feel that the chaos of our lives causes a necessity to return to how things previously were.

At the end of the performance, I was really glad I didn’t miss it. It was really enjoyable to see the dancers and musicians perform in a different way than I was used to. After seeing it, my advice for all is that the next time that you’re feeling a little or a lot of stress, just do a little dance and shake your arms in the air. It may make you feel better.

Spellbeamed?!

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Spellbeamed. Yes, I was definitely spellbeamed to another time and place. Why do I say that? Well, this performance was certainly very peculiar and bizarre, if those words could accurately describe what I saw and heard.

All I really knew going in to this performance was that this was an avant-garde type of performance. This perhaps was not the first of this kind of performance, but it was my first time experiencing such a strange production. I have never heard of such sounds and noises being made by anyone before. This being said, I actually enjoyed it to an extent. Granted there were dissonant moments, but there were also some cool things that the performers did.

I must say the whole thing did strike me as strange but at the same time I thought it was really interesting. In the first part, two women, Shayna Dunkelman and Zeena Parkins, were dressed in white coats and white gloves that made it seem like they were researchers or archeologists looking and examining the items in front of them. Some of the items in front of them were a brush, horsehair, and ribbon. Ms. Parkins proceeded to pass items to Ms. Dunkelman, who “played” each item on a harp laying on its side. I liked the different sounds each object made; the “artifacts” made interesting and unexpected sounds as they were “played” on the harp.  While this was going on, a woman, Ms. Joan La Barbara, portraying the dead Walter Benjamin using a voice modifier, was reciting one of his essays. It was hard to understand what she was saying; I only heard bits and pieces like the words “bookkeeper” and “collector.” At times I found it difficult to focus on one woman, but all in all, I thought it was a really cool piece of work.

The performance then proceeded to the stage, where there were musicians from Ne(x)tworks Ensemble and JACK Quartet who played violins, trombone, and harp, just to name a few instruments. These players played both traditional notated music as well as music in the form of pictures. As pictures came up on the screen, each player interpreted them and produced different sounds. Some of the images were paper clips, coins, and a bus. They all were very expressive, intense, and powerful in their playing and movements as they played their music. I give them credit for being able to play in what others may call the “wrong way” because often times when one knows how to play the “right way” it makes it harder to play anyway else.

Some sounds that the musicians produced were dissonant; other sounds were really, really strange. At times I felt a bit overwhelmed by how many different sounds being made at once on stage, but there were also times where I felt I could enjoy the music.  The part I really enjoyed was when I saw the piano player, Stephen Gosling, interpret into music a black dot that came on the screen. He played the piano with such power and intensity. I could barely see his hands. I thought that was amazing; I wished I could play like that. The part of the performance I found to be really strange and haunting were the noises coming from Ms. La Barbara’s voice. She seemed to be making sounds I never knew were humanly possible; I don’t know how she made them. Other noises that were produced sounded like when bombs drop in cartoons and the turbines of a plane. It felt so real; I felt like I should be on a plane and taking off.

The use of pictures as music during the performance was interesting. It actually got me thinking about how pictures could have been used as notes. Ancient civilizations, like Egypt, used pictures, hieroglyphics, as written language, why not use pictures as notes? It seems odd to do that now because we have become accustomed to seeing music as 5 lines with black round circles on them, but pictures could have been used as a representation of music; pictures could have been just as valid, perhaps not for use as musical notation now, but maybe it was back in ancient times.

Although many people did not like the performance, I enjoyed watching them play music in a different way. I do agree that it was weird, strange, peculiar, any other type of word along those lines that you could think of, but it was definitely interesting. I certainly don’t think I’ll be forgetting it anytime soon.