do we fight for the right to a night at the opera now?

Sorry it's been a while, folks...turns out we still actually have this thing called "class" over here in London...

Wednesday night was my first opera-going experience for "Opera in London!" We saw Stravinsky's "The Rake's Progress" at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden.  Oh my GOD, it was the coolest experience!  The Royal Opera House is so sumptuous and glamorous I can't even begin to describe...but I'll start at the beginning.

Peter and I went out to dinner before the show with Anton Juan, a crazy, kooky lovable Philippinian professor who teaches a few different theater classes here.  He took us to Chinatown where we ate at this place that was literally roasting whole ducks, intestines, and tongues right in the window.  Needless to say, I played it safe and got chicken-and-crispy-noodles, which were great.  It was a great meal full of very random and wonderful conversation, and I'm glad I could spend some time with such a cool professor, especially considering I'm not in any theater classes! 

Peter and I then bid Prof. Juan goodbye and went to have a few pre-theater drinks at this lovely pub near the Opera House, the name of which escapes me right now.  It was very much one of the places the opera-going crowd was hanging out pre-show...everybody was dressed to the nines and it was all very much a place to be seen.  We made friends with this darling old man, Tony, who turned out to have Alzheimer's but who was utterly interesting and charmingly odd.  I was a little worried he didn't know where he was going but he followed us to the Opera House and I'm sure he got back to his wife (who was in some kind of business meeting) alright. 

The OPERA HOUSE!  Imagine an enormous gigantic oversized Roman-style temple complete with all the columns and pediments and a grand staircase and enormous windows, all blazing with light and full of glamorous people, and you've got the scene.  You walk in and take a left, and end up in the former Covent Garden Flower Market, which has been glassed in now and is a huge meeting-place for the crème de la crème to see and be seen pre-show and at intermission.  We spent a bit down there, seeing and...well, probably not being seen, but oh well.  Then we took this huge escalator up to a second-level bar that was glassed in, overlooking the old Flower Market.  Peter got some Beefeater Gin, and James, another ND friend, and I got some chardonnay, then went to peer out the windows.  Time came to take our seats and the opera began!

It was very bizarre, to be honest, but I really enjoyed it.  The opera's plot centers around the corruption of this sort of foolish, vapid "rake" of a man by a Devil-figure, and how his eventual decline to death is stopped only by his true love for his childhood sweetheart...although he ends up insane and alone at the end.  Sigh.  This director had decided to set the play, which should be placed in London in the 18th century, in 1950's Hollywood.  Which was even weirder.  Needless to say it was more than a little bit...well, unique, but I had the time of my life listening to the amazingly gifted singers (both the "rake" and the devil figure were phenomenal!!), watching the orchestra and just taking in everything around me.  Intermission was a half-hour blur of stem ginger ice cream (interesting and bizarre, much like the opera!), watching people who were watching other people, and discussing the weirdness of the opera among our classmates.  Second half: more of the same.  Singers and orchestra great, plot bizarre and random, still very much enjoyable for me because I love any kind of theatre art.  All in all, a wonderful night I'll remember for a long time!

I'll blog later today (hopefully) about yesterday and the great night we had, but right now the sun is out and I have a paper to write, so I'm going to stroll to a café somewhere and get that done with a coffee!