I went there on the train with a friend from Yale, M, who happened to be going in at the same time. We had planned on meeting at the station at 7:30 but I accidentally set my alarm for 6pm instead of 6am. I threw together an interview-appropriate outfit and rushed to grab a cab to the train station.
After a quite pleasant ride on the commuter rail and then the subway, we arrived in Lincoln Center. M picked up his opera ticket, and I went to my lesson. I'm currently figuring out what I'm doing next year, so I needed to meet with a long-term substitute musician in the New York Philharmonic, who teaches at one of the schools I'm looking at. It was an amazing lesson. I really learned a lot from just a short meeting with him!
Then I rushed across the plaza to the Metropolitan Opera, where I had a ticket to see Wagner's epic religiously allegorical opera Parsifal.
I don't often get a chance to go to the opera because of the expense of the tickets, but a professor who I get along with very well couldn't make it yesterday, so he had an extra ticket that he passed along to me. I was way up in the highest row, but the sound was still amazing. Sometimes it was a bit hard to see what was happening, but I think that's mostly because of the simplistic costume design for this production, in which most of the singers were wearing identical things, so it became pretty difficult to tell them apart.
Despite the length of this opera, I really enjoyed it! The show started at noon, and we only got out of there just before 6pm. There were two intermissions. The first act was good, but a bit long at two hours. I started getting a bit uncomfortable when we still had about 20-30 minutes left. The second act went by really fast - it was so enthralling that I didn't even notice how long it was! By the third act, however, I was getting ready for it to be over, and I didn't enjoy it as much as the first two.
For those of you who aren't familiar with Wagner's music, you MUST give the overture to this opera a try. It is some of the most beautiful music ever composed, and it isn't as aggressively chromatic as some of his other music. You can really hear the religiosity of this gorgeous music.
If you're interested in a more in-depth exploration of this opera, there is at least one full production available on YouTube, here:
After the opera, M and I reunited to go out to dinner with D, a friend of mine from high school and undergrad who goes to Juilliard now. We had some delicious Chinese food and reminisced about all the crazy things we did back in the day.
I got back to New Haven pretty late at night, and then I had an exciting day today as well, which you will be hearing about in a separate post soon.
Until next time!
Lauren
No comments:
Post a Comment