The Ballet

Well, it was certainly an interesting experience! I went to see the ballet at the Staatsoper tonight! I was there in line at 5:10 for the 7:30 show, so I was something like 7th or 8th in line. I've never even been close to that close to the front, so it was cool! Gretchen ended up not coming, so I brought a book and read a couple of chapters of it while sitting down there....I got Parterre (orchestra) tickets, and when I got in, sure enough I found a nice spot in the very first row of rails! It made a huge huge difference to stand there where I wasn't under the eave and such, and today there were fewer people, so I had a little breathing room. The ballet was called "Wiener Abend" and it was basically a collection of pieces, none of which were actually ballets. The first piece was a Beethoven Piano Concerto (op. 73), which was very interesting. It's one of his more ubiquitous concerti, and although I can't remember when I've actually heard it, everything sounded familiar. The pianist was not very good, unfortunately.....he made a lot of mistakes (audible mistakes, like playing octaves wrong and screwing up scales.....it was weird) The orchestra was FANTASTIC, of course. The choreography was really really good.....there was a large scrim which stayed down for the exposition of the first movement which had Beethoven's signature in red letters on the bottom (I have pictures)....it was interesting to see people dancing in the background. There were these little lamp things which went up later, and towards the end of the concerto a large version of these globular lamp things came down to a point right above the chest of a reclining dancer, and a man then pushed it up to one side and let it go, and the giant pendulum continued to swing throughout the rest of the piece. It was pretty cool. After that was the first intermission....20 minutes, standard fare. I took the time to write down the opus numbers, but unfortunately I was not comprehensive due to the confusing layout of the bulletin....na ja! After the intermission they did two slow movements from Mozart piano concerti (nos. 23 & 21....21 is really really famous) They were both interesting....especially 21. These women who had been standing at the back of the stage during the first Mozart came forward gliding in these ridiculous floor-length 17th-century-black dress-looking things. (the kind that makes your hips look ridiculously wide) The glided so smoothly around the stage....it was amazing.....and at one point they sort of jumped out of them, revealing the fact that the dresses were not actual dresses, but in fact these rigid prop things that had wheels.....they kept popping up throughout the Mozart set....sometimes without a visible rider, sometimes with a man using one.....it was really funny. After the slow movements, they did 6 (it seems like more, but the bulletin said 6) dances that he wrote....I'd never heard any of them before (KV 571). They were all very humorously choreographed....it was hilarious. After that was another intermission, and then they did 15 quintillion walzes by (if I read the bulletin correctly) Josef Strauß (son of the famous Johann).....they were good, and you could tell that the orchestra simultaneously hated and loved them.....in one of them the orchestra even sang! It was really funny, but only to me (everyone else laughed at the strangest things, but no one seemed to think that 30+ string players singing a rudimentary drinking-song type melody was very funny......the high G they hit certainly was hilarious!) They were also choreographed well....there were two groups of dancers: one group was more elegant in dress and choreography and came in on stage right, and the other group was more modern and spunky (we're talking Austrian waltz spunky....) and came from stage left.....so basically every phrase of every waltz, because they're ALL repeated, was danced by first one group and then the other. It was interesting, but it was getting a little old after the 7th waltz......it was, in fact, the only time that night when I had any conception of time at all...during every other piece I was enraptured by the beautiful music and flawless dancing. During the waltzes I defintely was aware of the slow, arduous passage of time. Don't get me wrong, I love waltzes, but I was not expecting this many. Knowing that the last piece on the concert was a Mahler piece for string orchestra and Harp (didn't write down the info.....so I'm no help for this one) every time a waltz ended I thought "OK, the Mahler will be next....." only to be greeted by another canned waltz intro. It was a bit frustrating, but still enjoyable once I accepted it. The Mahler was gorgeous!!!! I'm not his hugest fan, but the piece was beautiful!! The choreography I was not too keen on, but to each his own, I guess....it was just this one couple, and the girl was always flailing and being all verklempt......it was not interesting, and certainly did not do justice to the music. Oh well. It was a great evening of music and dance!

What else did I do today? I got more money for the next couple of weeks, since I always break my €100 bills at the opera! The ATMs here are nice because you can request money in €10 increments and they give you 10s, 20s, 50s, and 100s, but it's not always easy to cash a €100 bill....but there they move so much money I hardly think it's a problem.....I've never even gotten a strange glance when purchasing my €3.50 ticket with a €100 bill....but at the supermarket they get really huffy even if you use a €50 for a small purchase.......in any case, that happened. I had a really easy test in German....nothing special at all. Classical Symphony was interesting....I did do all the reading, but it was a photo finish! We had an interesting discussion about sonata form, whether it's a binary or ternary structure, and indeed if the use of the terminology of sonata form is an efficient way of describing composition. Interesting, but esoteric. After that I went home, called the coach whose number Russell had given me (she wasn't there, but I talked with her husband for a while) After getting my spot at the Opera, I had time to take the U-bahn back home and call Michelle again (the coach I'm going to work with). I thought about using a payphone, but I realized that i needed access to my schedule and so I had to be at home. I spoke to her, and we worked out a time for two weeks from now. (she's full next week, and the week after that she's not in town) I also talked to Prof. Schachermeier about studying organ, and she said she would talk to some of her friends and get back to me next week! That's really exciting, because hopefully I'll be able to pay for occasional lessons, and almost certainly get a place to practice!! YAY!

All right, that's all for today!

P.S. Tonight my dream was realized......well, one of them anyway......I saw an episode of The Golden Girls in German! It was the one with the pregnant girl whose father throws her out and something about a dog that's attacking Sophia....the voices were strange, like all dubbed shows, but Bea Arthur's voice was spot on! Estelle Getty, however, sounded like she had a bad case of Emphysema, and Blanche just isn't the same with no accent! (Maybe she should have had a Bavarian accent....JB said the guys at Oktoberfest said that Bavaria was sort of like the Kentucky of Germany........) It was really funny, and I understood a surprising amount of what they were saying (it helped that I knew the basic plot.)