Wow. Entertaining. Gripping. Intense. Baroque Opera. 4 hours. This was not your average opera evening. So to start of Joseph has this knack of knowing famous people and this particular famous person happened to be the casting director at the Theatre an der Wien. He met us out front and took us around through the back stage door. We walked in through all the official doors marked "entritt verboten". Real VIP treatment. This was a dress rehersal (but basically a real, full performance) and other people had bought 15 euro rush seating. We had all of the theatre seating open to choose from, for FREE, before the doors were open to the public.
Whoa...back up. This isn't just any theatre. This is THE theatre. Yup, the one where Mozart's Magic Flute premiered! And Beethoven's 5th symphony ! The fifth symphony!! It looks a typical opera house but smaller and less fancy.
Okay, but this opera! It was called Partenope and it was by Handel ... so very Baroque. The little Baroque orchestra was cute too. There was this one chap who had a jacked up lute/gutair thing. The neck was about 6 feet long and it stuck way out of the orchestra pit ... embaressing :). So this oper was amazing because it was like a high-action, modern movie packed with the opera as an afterthought. And it was very tastefully done. It included a yoga scene, sigg water bottle, laptop screensaver, small war, boxing match, real motorcycle, a pool, giant blow-up dolphin and an army comander who looked like he belonged in the Great Escape. I also encountered my first counter-tenors. They are guys who can sing in their falseto ... actually it is kind of really weird becuase they are hardcore guys who sing soprano. Yes, very odd.
Whoa...back up. This isn't just any theatre. This is THE theatre. Yup, the one where Mozart's Magic Flute premiered! And Beethoven's 5th symphony ! The fifth symphony!! It looks a typical opera house but smaller and less fancy.
Okay, but this opera! It was called Partenope and it was by Handel ... so very Baroque. The little Baroque orchestra was cute too. There was this one chap who had a jacked up lute/gutair thing. The neck was about 6 feet long and it stuck way out of the orchestra pit ... embaressing :). So this oper was amazing because it was like a high-action, modern movie packed with the opera as an afterthought. And it was very tastefully done. It included a yoga scene, sigg water bottle, laptop screensaver, small war, boxing match, real motorcycle, a pool, giant blow-up dolphin and an army comander who looked like he belonged in the Great Escape. I also encountered my first counter-tenors. They are guys who can sing in their falseto ... actually it is kind of really weird becuase they are hardcore guys who sing soprano. Yes, very odd.
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