On Monday I went to the opera after school with Larissa and Jason! This time it was L'Orfeo by Monteverdi. (Different from the previous Orpheus opera, Orphée.)
Larissa and I stopped in Sol after school on the way to the show, and they've set up this Christmas tree since the last time I was there! Later when we saw it, the bottom was lit up.
Larissa and I needed to eat a quick dinner before the opera, and this Jollibee's ad has been haunting us for weeks (that chicken sandwich looks so good), and there's a Jollibee's right in Sol, so this was the move. (Also momentary vegetarian hiatus.)
It was so good I'll be real. Worth it. (What do we say... we needed this.)
Then it was opera time.
Opera seats this time--we bought the cheapest ones left a couple weeks ago and they said "no visibility." We were like, "That can't be true." It was true. We could see the stage with that TV and that gray screen above the stage was where the supertitles were. Even though our seats were bad, this opera was super cool. (I think I would love every opera.) It's one of the first operas, first performed in 1607, and regarded as the first masterpiece in opera. The vibes were cool. The music had a very medieval feel. The costumes were flowy and fun; I want to dress like the nymphs.
It was also fun to hear the 1600s Italian vs the 1800s Italian from the other operas. Part of the fun of operas for me is listening to the language being sung and then compare it to the translations. At the Teatro Real they have supertitles in Spanish and English, so it's fun to see what I can recognize in Italian and then compare that to what's translated in Spanish and English and compare the translations to each other. The translations last night were interesting--there was a lot more variation between them than there has been at other operas and there were other different stylistic choices/weird word choices. I think it might be because the opera is older so the translator was stretching the language more? Also I thought it was funny that this opera was entirely in tú form and the last Orpheus opera was entirely in usted form. In Orphée, the characters would be trying to kill each other and calling each other cowards and thieves, but all using usted. In L'Orfeo, Orpheus would be begging the gods on his hands and knees, but only using tu. Seemed a little backwards TO ME. (Spanish pragmatics with tú vs. usted is really complex though so idk.)
After the opera.
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