Macaulay Seminar One at Brooklyn College

Knowing myself, and knowing what I thought an opera was, I did not think I would have enjoyed the opera slightly. However, Tuesday nights opera really didn’t meet my expectations. The opera was different than the typical opera I thought it would be like. I really enjoyed the story line, the humor, and the stage. If it wasn’t for the subtitles behind each seat, I would not have known what was going on, so that was very helpful!
Shakespeare’s play incorporates three distinct realms – that of the humans, the fairies, and the men who put on the play in a play.
The orchestra was great! Every contour and style of music seems fitted and imaginatively to characters and mood. The curtains between intermissions slowly rose up and down, like breaths in a deep sleep, and lullabies, which all tied into the theme of night, dreams. The stage looks like a modern day diorama with stars and moon inside a black frame. Inside, you had things like mountains, a forest, and a tree branch connecting the four neon doors. It felt similar to how a Shakespeare play would have looked and been performed in Elizabethan times.
My favorite part of the opera was the children’s chorus. It both looked and sounded beautiful. It was very in sync and rhythmic; it was just was very enjoyable to watch.
I know it was Shakespeare’s play, but I would have hoped that the way the end played out between the four humans would have been a bit different. Im one of those helpless romantics and would have enjoyed seeing it a little more dramatic and unfolded a bit better.
It was overall a very enjoyable and classy night!

Our group had to think of three (or more) truths about music. The group was me, Allegra, Devin and Nicole. Our truths were:

1. Music brings out emotion

2. Beauty

3. Music can tell a story (also includes history), like the Napoleon example we gave in class

4. Music is timeless. It’s one of the forms of art that was on the Earth since cavemen were here and will continue on forever.

5. Simplistic- Music is so simple and requires almost nothing to create it. For example, a little kid can use any surface as drums or someone can whistle just whistle.

Here is the image from class:

When I heard that we were going to see Midsummer’s Night Dream as in Opera, I was very excited because it’s one of my favorite Shakespearean plays. In addition, I never went to an opera before so I was excited for a new experience, not knowing what to expect. I thought the Opera was going to be the actual story line of the play with outbursts of music in between, like a Broadway show.

After the play, I learnt that the Opera is ALL singing! Now, I am not really complaining because there voices were amazing! At first, I thought they were lip-singing. Also, I loved the fact that they place a small screen in front of you to display the words that the actors/singers were saying. Without it, I would be really lost.

I felt bad for the people sitting next to me because I saw that there screens weren’t working (Prof. Ugoretz, you know what I mean :p)

When I left the theater, I came out knowing that I had a great laugh, a fun time with friends, and a learning experience.

Attending the Metropolitan Opera on the evening before a philosophy mid-term exam was one of the greatest things I could have done, and did! I had seen other film an stage productions of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (including one I participated in during my junior year of high school), but Tuesday’s version was by far the most modern. Of course, people often imagine that Shakespeare’s plays are performed with a Renaissance setting, whether this mean the set looks antique or the setting really is Europe. However, this performance changed the way I thought of on-stage opera and the means by which the audience is captivated.

No one doubts the excellence of the Met, so the cast were bar none some of the greatest the opera world has to offer. Yes, the singing of opera is indeed an art form, but the set did just as good a job at sparking intrigue. When my high school put on our production of Midsummer, we tried very hard to replicate the Athenian and forest scenes to the letter. In particular, many of the forest scenes took place in front and within four towering green walls that had been constructed with a red door fashioned into their corners. In addition, a large tree branch had been constructed through the green walls in such a way that it had pierced the walls. At the start, the same frustration that I express towards Duchamp’s “In Advance of a Broken Arm”. Around halfway through the first act, though, I realized that the four walls symbolized the four lovers: Helena and Demetrius, Hermia and Lysander; the branch represented the Puck’s mistake with the love spell and the lover’s quarrels that followed. In many of the world’s cultures, the color red represents love and passion. This made me wonder if the doors represented the entryway to each of the four lovers’ hearts, and that each character who passed through the doors were following an intricate stage directions that followed intricacies of the storyline. Lastly, I wonder if the tree branch had been forced into the four walls or had grown through them gradually, each possibility leading to a slightly different interpretation of the story.

Overall, I had a fantastic time at Tuesday night’s outing to the Metropolitan Opera. In many ways, my opinion of the opera changed for the better. Therefore, I look forward to attending many more operas with the Macaulay class in the four years at Macaulay.

My visit to the ICP was an eye-opening experience. The picture that really affected me was one capture by Zoe Strauss, titled “Two Women”. This picture depicted two women, probably mother and daughter. When I looked closely at the photograph, I saw scars on the mother’s arm, and what looked liked the fading evidence of a black eye on her right eye. Turning towards the daughter, I faintly saw yellow bags of skin under her eyes, which I realized to be the signs of malnutrition and lack of sleep. In other words, these women have been abused. What really struck me about this photograph was that my own mother, and her mother, my grandmother, had also been abused decades ago. My mom would tell me stories about the abuse she and her mother got from my grandfather, and I was never able to imagine what it must have been like. However, looking at this picture of two battered women, I was flooded by emotions; some sadness, but mostly anger. Prior to this momen, I have never been so affected by art, any art, because I was always able to distance myself from it. But not this time. No matter how much I tried, I kept getting pulled into it until I finally let myself be captured by it. Zoe Strauss has done an amazing job with this exhibit.