Opera and Ballet:

Carmen:

This girl is the bomb dot com. She’s feisty and not afraid to boss people around. Honestly I fell asleep in the second act and regret it. During the first act I was a bit confused because when I would try and lift my eyes up to see what was happening, I’d miss out on some of the words so I’d just read the screen. I didn’t realize that about half of it was repeated multiple times. It would hurt my head to look up and down so after my nap, I would just look at the play or just my captions and keep up like that. Anyway, the opera amazed me because of so much skill that was needed. The cast has to be able to sing and project while acting and remembering lines and portraying so many emotions. It was cool to listen to something in a different language. When our seats moved around, I loved Jeanette’s commentary. What was the most amazing was the fact that they didn’t use microphones and even in the back, we could hear everything they said clearly and the amount of children in the play that they trained to act all at the same time. It must be super hectic back stage. I mainly liked the experience more because it was so different. Everyone was very into the play and wasn’t afraid to shush us if we spoke.

Ballet:

This was probably my favorite trip! Never had I thought ballet could be more than something you’d see in black swan. I laughed, felt sad, and was awestruck throughout the night. I love visual art and watching them dance in sync amazed me. We had great seats (I sat next to Professor! :)) and could see every movement. I loved how they made everything look so simple—“Art is something difficult made to seem easy.” The thing I liked the most was that unlike the opera, the story line was much more easy to follow along with. I never felt lost. I feel like a lot of it had to do with the fact that they didn’t have to speak so I didn’t have to follow with so many senses. It was long enough for me to enjoy it and understand the work of art, but still short that I was left wanting more.