The Tempest

I had an interesting experience during our visit the Metropolitan Opera. Going into it, I was pretty excited. This was mostly because I had previously attended an opera and I had thoroughly enjoyed it, but I felt a little differently about The Tempest. This was probably because the previous opera that I attended was actually geared for children so it was kind of funny, and was based a well known children’s story (I think it was Cinderealla). In contrast, I found The Tempest to be a little boring; probably because I wasn’t super familiar with the story. Also some parts were a little difficult for me to follow, and I actually had a little trouble following some of the different characters (there were two, whose names I forget, but they had some pretty similar costumes). I’m also not sure how well a medium opera was to convey a Shakespeare play. Some of the rhyming scheme wasn’t too great. Also, the singing itself made it difficult to actually understand a lot of the words, and I found myself paying a lot of attention to the little screen on the seat in front of me, and not so much at the actors on the stage. I felt that the singing also caused a lot of the words to be stretched out too much in order to fill the length of the music, and that kind of bothered me, too.

There were however aspect of the opera that I did enjoy, however. I did like the grandeur of the opera; I kind of liked dressing up for the night out, and the building itself was beautiful, both from the inside and the outside. I also enjoyed the musical aspect of the opera. I spent a solid amount of time averting my eyes from the stage and into the orchestra pit, watching the condutor do his thing, and orchestra making they’re wonderful music. I also liked the stage design, especially the very first scene depicting the tempest, and costumes a lot. And the secret backdoor exit was pretty cool, too.