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Showing posts from March, 2016

Opera: Uhm, no

I can now compare the opera "Madama Butterfly" to the movie "Pulp Fiction": Both were to take about 3 hours to get through, and in both cases I gave up after the first hour. I've told people I'm not into opera or musicals. I don't like my concerts interrrupted by story telling, and I don't like my stories interrupted by singing. However, my season ticket included "Madama Butterfly", which I've only heard about, so off I went to row 15, seat 34. It didn't take many minutes before I realized the drawback to singing a story. In Italian. To a Norwegian audience. Fortunately, high above the stage, was an an LED screen giving Norwegian translations of the libretto. Look at what's going on on the stage, or look up at the LED captions to find out what they're singing so you can understand what's going on on the stage. Tough choice. I tried to find a way to get into the story or the stage or the music, but wasn't getti