Friday, March 16, 2018

A Night at the Opera


A contributor to a watch forum I read wrote in the other day:
One of my favorite operas is playing Friday in Chicago. Last day. Cosi fan Tutte, by Mozart. Tickets are min. $100 each. Some lightweight binoculars are supposed to come for my daughter tomorrow. Problem is, she's only 6 and can't read yet, much less fast enough for the projected subtitles. She would enjoy the music, have fun with her binocs and in general, have a blast, but she wouldn't understand anything and would be asking me all the time what's going on. Should I pony up and take her? I'm thinking yes. She would remember it forever, even if she can't read. 
The few who ventured to answer the question agreed that the father should take his daughter.*

*

When my daughter was about the same age, I took her to see the New York City Ballet version of The Nutcracker at Lincoln Center. When the curtain dropped, Susan was indignant: 

“That was unfair!” she proclaimed. 

“What was unfair? I asked.

“They didn’t get to dance,” referring to the children Marie and the Prince. 

I tried explaining to her that during the second act when they are in the Kingdom of the Sugarplum Fairy and seated on a raised platform, they are being honored by being danced to by the others.

But Susan wasn’t having it. For her—since she was taking dancing lessons—the purpose of dancing was to dance, not to be danced to.

*

In doing my research for my doctorate so many years ago, I came across an anecdote that George Bernard Shaw told about his first visit to a concert in Dublin when he was a child. (I have searched to re-discover it—but in vain; so I have to paraphrase it.) Shaw’s mother gave singing lessons at the family home, so the young boy had an idea of what singers looked like. Upon reaching his seat in the concert hall, young Shaw climbed onto it and, resting on his knees, turned his back to the stage to face the audience. As time went by, he wondered when the finely-dressed men and women would stand up and begin to sing.

Young Shaw had not learned that one convention (the major one, in fact) of a musical evening is that the singers will perform on the stage.

*

This is by way of an introduction to a future discussion of conventions—artistic and otherwise.

***

*A note of no importance:

The father, who goes by the nom de Web of Smaug, wrote that if he does go to the opera tonight, he will probably wear this watch:




I have its soulmate:


1 comment:

  1. Nice watch! And that IS the purpose of dance--dancing!!

    ReplyDelete