Norma v. The Rake

I went to an opera in Berlin called “Norma”, which was about as exciting as the name suggests. It was about a woman whose husband falls in love with a young girl, so she decides to kill her kids. Thirty minutes later she can’t do it, so she asks her husband to come back to her and forget all about it. Otherwise, she’ll kill him. The decision is obvious: he chooses death in about thirty seconds. It takes twenty minutes for Norma to decide to kill herself as well, and another twenty to convince Norma’s dad to take the kids. I fell asleep during the joint suicide, but considering how rested I felt when I woke up it must have taken a while. It was in Italian, with German subtitles, so that didn’t help either. I came out of that one feeling okay about the fact that opera is on the verge of becoming a dead art form. Good riddance, Norma.

I tried opera again in Paris, and came out with an opposite perspective. The opera was called “The Rake’s Progress”. It was a morality tale about a guy who makes a deal with the devil, who leads him to temptation. After a ton of sex the devil gets him to marry a bearded woman in order to conquer his lust, and then he gets into communism…I know it sounds weird, but it was really, really good. W.H. Auden wrote the book, and Stravinsky did the score. The merging of the music, the lyrics, and the stage production was really perfect. I got these really good seats because if you’re one of the first ten people in a special line (consisting of students, the elderly, and the unemployed) they are discounted. My seat is normally about $170, but I paid $40. I could read the score over the organist’s shoulder. Anyway, now I’m pretty much sold on opera, maybe. I guess I should see a third one and see where I land. It was kind of silly, because I had a dress and fancy shoes packed in my workbag, so I had to change in the opera bathroom. I always wonder if anyone notices when I do that. Speaking of that bag, it’s breaking. $40 at Target, who could see this one coming? It cost the same as my opera ticket, but the opera ticket was better, since the memories will last a lifetime. Just kidding, that’s totally dumb. I needed a bag to put my stuff in, if I had carried it with my bare hands those bad memories would have lasted a lifetime, too. Sometimes I’m not sure how to put a monetary value on things.