This week has been one of cultural experiences!Saturday we went to an art auction run by the on line bidding company lauritz.com - we'll see how many paintings we win next week!
Monday night Cristina and I went to Tivoli to see the Royal Danish Winds play. Cristina's good friend, Adam Simonsen, plays the clarinet in the quintet. The music was quite fantastic: four pieces (Bach, Ligerti, Hindemith & Nielsen), great playing by the five musicians (Obo, Klarinet, Fløjte, Horn & Fagot (which is really a Bassoon) and great sound in the Tivoli concert hall.
Tueday night we were off to the opera to see Tosca, accompanied by Cristina's mum, Berrit. Although the opera was of course performed in Italian, and even though the translated subtitles were in Danish... I think I managed to get the gist of what was going on: One guy is hiding in a church... his friend finds him and tells him to go hide at his place... the friends girlfriend arrives at the church and decides that his painting of the beautiful Madonna is a bit too much like the woman who lives down the road... meanwhile the bad guy in black comes looking for the guy who was hiding... he also has a thing for the friends girlfriend and decides that the friend is probably hiding the guy who was hiding, so he arrests him, which is convienient because now the bad guy can try his luck with the girlfriend... they still haven't found the guy who was hiding and the friend won't talk... the bad guy convinces the girlfriend that if he can have his way with her he'll free the friend (his girl'ish screems in the background kind of help her decide that this is a good plan)... so bad guy writes a pass for her & her boyfriend to get out of rome... he doesn't see the knife coming as soon as he signs his name (1st death)... meanwhile the original guy that was hiding decides, who knows why, to kill himself (2nd death)... the friend who helped him goes to the firing squad, who are meant to have blanks, and is shot (3rd death - fake)... the soldiers leave and the girlfriend plans to use the pass to get out of dodge... turns out they wern't blanks (3rd death - real)... of course she's upset so jumps of the city walls (4th death). So in good Operatic style, everyone pretty much dies... singing all the way.
As for the opera itself... 3½ out of 5. The Opera building is brand new and the theatre itself is quite nice and intimate. The Orchestra was a bit too strong for the singers and drowned them out a few times. The singers were quite good... but no Pavarotti here.
