I Promise You, This Will Be One of the Weirder Things You’ll See Today

- Poppa

Bohemian Tragedy

Poster for the 1896 production for Puccini's La bohème. Artist: Adolfo Hohenstein (1854-1928)

Wednesday evening Nan and I went to the Touhill for a performance of La Bohème, our first hard-core arm-waving baritone-bellowing opera, the kind where the fat lady sings, though neither of the ladies in this performance were fat.   The kind where everything’s in a language you don’t understand, and even if you did understand the language, you might not understand the words because they’re sung in such a stylized manner.  I knew nothing about this opera, didn’t associate it with any music I was familiar with, and had the vague notion it had something to do with cows.

Now that I’ve exhibited my usual lèse majesté, I have to tell you, I liked it.  A lot.

Part of it was the great seats Nan purchased, third row behind the orchestra pit, twenty feet from the performers.

Part of it was the thrill of seeing the magic created before mine very eyes, much the way I felt at the St. Louis Symphony last weekend.

Part of it was the lecture we went to before the performance where an enthusiastic young opera student, eyes shining with excitement, not only presented a synopsis, but suggested nuances to look for and explained why it made her cry every time she listened to it.

Part of it was the supertitles projected above the stage allowing the non-cognoscenti to appreciate the subtle humor in the story as opposed to just getting the gist in the synopsis (spoilers *).

Without the supertitles, about all you could tell was: she’s angry, he’s happy, they’re sad.  And what are those guys with the brooms hollering about?  I’ve always thought of opera as all grandiose all the time, but the supertitles allowed me to appreciate the occasional banality.  There was a scene between Marcello and Musetta where the supertitles make it clear that, in spite of the histrionic gestures, elaborate vocalizations, and incomprehensible Italian, what’s happening on stage is the 19th century French equivalent of a domestic dispute on a Cops episode.  (Mauvais garcon, whatcha gonna do?  Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?)

Before the performance, I told Nan I couldn’t understand how something so staged and stilted could make someone cry in spite of hearing it over and over.   By the time the curtain came down, I understood.

La Bohème at the Touhill was performed by Teatro Lirico D’Europa.

- Poppa

* They meet.  They argue.  They separate.  They reunite.  She dies.

Tchaikovsky’s 1812 and the Canon

This weekend found us attending a concert of the St Louis Symphony Orchestra on Friday night, buying a new camera on Saturday, and spending hours hanging out in Bellefontaine Cemetery on Sunday.  In between, we found time to eat good things, sleep as late as we wanted, and watch several episodes of The Wire.

Photo by Dan Dreyfus

The concert was at the Powell Symphony Hall.  We splurged for seats in a Grand Tier box where we were sealed off and protected from the hoi polloi in the audience (those symphony crowds can be such louts).

We had our own lounge serving as an additional buffer between us and the masses, though we shared our little drinking room with two other boxes.  We wrote down our beverage orders before the concert started, left wads of money, and the staff brought us our requests right before the intermission started.  Very civilized.

Here, Nan is “enjoying” a taste of my Talisker (“The high phenol level and distinct taste may prove ‘challenging’ for the casual whisky drinker“).  It turns out that another name for phenol is carbolic acid.

The concert consisted of pieces by four composers; Korngold, Balakirev, Borodin, and Tchaikovsky.  I’ve listened to symphonic music most of my life but I’ve rarely seen it performed live.  It’s like watching a miracle occur before your eyes, to see people actually producing the sound you’ve only ever heard coming from speakers.

Most of us were there for Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, which you all know, even if you don’t know you know it (“The only cereal that’s shot from guns!” if you’re over 50).  There were no cannons since this was an inside concert, but a huge bass drum served as well.

The reference to cannons lets me transition to Saturday with a shameless pun, because we spent the day buying a Canon Digital Rebel T1i EOS 500D.  (Get it?  Cannon.  Canon.  Groan!  Sorry!)

We didn’t actually spend the whole day buying the camera, but I spent most of the day figuring out how to use it.  SLR Cameras have come a long way since I learned how to use Nan’s old Pentax in the seventies.

Nan's Old Pentax, state-of-the-art in 1965 (Photo by Erin)

The New Canon, more like an F15 cockpit (Photo by Mauritsvink)

We spent Sunday wandering around Bellefontaine Cemetery, a gigantic necropolis with thousands of interesting monuments, memorials, and mausoleums.

More of the pictures I took with the new camera are posted publicly on Facebook.

- Poppa

You’ve Been Warned!

Possibly fake, it’s been around since at least 2005, but still funny.

- Poppa

Segways Over Forest Park – 2009

Old Rock Stars

Laugh-out-loud funny.   Thanks to Diane (AKA, the Blue Ridge Gal), another Wandering Iowegian.  She’s added a new nostalgia blog, Dragging Main, about life in Algona Iowa in the sixties and seventies.

- Poppa