2 nights at the Opera - Istanbul, Turkey
5 Stars This place was Amazing visited Dec 13, 2005
After the sad performance of West Side Story (see my earlier post) we were slightly trepidatious at spending another whole 10AUD on two more tickets to the opera, but I have wanted to see a production of Carmen for a long time, so we decided to risk it! I'm very glad we did! Far from the mess of WSS, Carmen was a wonderful production both visually and musically - the costumes were beautiful and colourful, the sets incredibly elaborate, the dancing polished (I think they might have actually rehearsed more than once!) and the singing beautiful. There were a few moments when I thought a little more drama and actual acting would have helped those of us who were having trouble with the turkish subtitles (opera is hard to understand in any language and the non-native french was mostly impossible to decipher) but overall it was a great experience. I don't think I had ever realised just how much famous music there is in Carmen. Hearing it all at once was fantastic. On the strength of that, we bought tickets to Madame Butterfly this week - another famous opera I have often wanted to see. Again a very traditional performance, with elaborate sets (well, set, this time, in the singular) and traditional costumes. Actually very traditional costumes - possibly modelled on original costumes from the 1904 premieres - designed by someone who had had a kimono described to them, but probably had never seen one! Butterfly's dress was something like 1900's dress with japanese features, such as long rectangular sleeves and an obi on the back! Quite pretty, of course! Like 'Carmen' the music was wonderful, though a few moments could have done with a little more drama to help those of us who couldn't understand their turkish-italian diction or the subtitles. I had to stop myself trying to understand the words after a while - both in Carmen and Butterfly, I found myself getting a headache after the first act or so - from trying to decipher singing in one language, subtitles in another and translating what I could into English for Kate! And it wasn't just the multi-lingual aspect that got to me. I suddenly realised at one point that we were australians watching a opera set in japan about an american sung in Italian performed by turks. Argh!