Dornröschen
I awoke very late.....but with enough time to compose myself and get some stuff done before Gretchen came over at 2:30 to got to the opera with me. We were going to see Dornröschen (Sleeping Beauty...the ballet by Tchaikovsky) and we were planning on meeting Kate there. Kate had been to church that morning at the Augustinerkirche, and had been kind of paranoid about getting a good spot at the opera....for some reason she thought that there was going to be a shitload of people there....well, there wasn't, and when Gretchen and I got there at 3:00 to meet Kate she wasn't there, and neither was anyone else! There were two people in line, and Gretchen and I decided that there was no point in waiting around outside in the cold and wind considering that we could just go get coffee and come back and not have an appreciably worse spot. We also figured that Kate had made a similar decision, and that we would most likely meet up with her when she decided to come back. So, Gretchen and I went across the street to Aida for coffee and cake and nice conversation, and then sauntered back over to the line. We met up with Kate there and gabbed for a while, mostly complaining about the cold. We eventually struck up a conversation with the woman behind us in line, who was very nice. At 4:30 they finally opened the doors, and we went inside into the nice and comfortable warmth. The conversation had meanwhile taken a political turn, so I started to back off from it a bit....eventually it became a huge conversation about politics, and eventually about religion, so Gretchen and I eventually stopped talking and let Kate and Annika (I honestly don't know how to spell her name) talk amongst themselves. I just felt really uncomfortable talking about it for some reason....as though I was constantly having to keep the conversation from getting ugly, even though we all were (basically) in agreement, if not about every little thing. I don't know. Anyway, after 3 hours of waiting in line we went inside and got places in the second row of parterre close to the center. It was really nice!
The ballet itself was OK....the orchestra was perhaps better in Swan Lake, but not by much.....it was once again almost entirely subs from what I could see, and the conductor did a good job holding them together, but didn't really do much else, I felt. The dancers were OK....it was nice to have Gretchen standing next to me telling me about all the technical things and if they were doing them well or not. (she dances ballet, and is really quite knowledgeable about it....certainly more than I am!) Sufficed to say that there were lots of technical imperfections (she confirmed my suspicion that the walking should not have been so loud, for instance, and that the choreography seemed not to be technically demanding to the dancers at all) All in all though everything looked really pretty, and the costumes and sets were certainly lovely as all get-out. They really spared no expense on the costumes, especially, except perhaps for Carabasse's dress, which looked suspiciously like the Queen of the Night's costume in their production of The Magic Flute. Perhaps I'm just making it up, though.....I mean, what are the odds that they'd recycle a costume like that for an entirely different person! I knew that certain themes from the Disney movie of Sleeping Beauty were taken from this ballet, but I had no idea that every single theme in the movie was in the ballet! The one I really got a kick out of was the Maleficent theme (if you don't remember....watch the movie again....it's a fantastic movie, and I can't exactly hum the theme for you!) I expected it to be on of Carabasse's themes (since she's the evil færie) but for the first three acts I never heard it. Just as I was beginning to entertain the notion that the Sherman Brothers had actually written an original theme for the movie, I heard it in the 3rd act. Now, in the ballet version, the 3rd act basically is a little coda to the plot (by which I mean NOTHING HAPPENS....not that anything ever REALLY happens in ballet.....but nothing even pretends to happen), wherein Aurora and the Prince get married and all these fairy tale characters come to their wedding, like Rotkäppchen (Little Red Riding Hood) and the Wolf, Aladdin, some bluebirds or something, and Puss in Boots. And what do you know if the scary Maleficent music was nothing more than the Puss in Boots dance! It was hilariously choreographed, too.....it was a pas de deux with both dancers in large cat helmet-mask things, and of course big red boots on Puss in Boots. On every diminished tremelo chord (do-doo-doo...baaaaaa [while I tremble my hands in the air]) they would turn to each other and fight with their claws really fast, like one does when sort of making fun of a cat. (I don't think I've ever seen a cat do that....they're usually a bit more economical with their strokes, if I'm not mistaken, rather than just randomly flailing for no reason) It was hilarious!! I managed to get some nice curtain call shots, including one before the curtain to catch the ridiculous gold glitter that fell during the finale. It was definitely tons of fun!
The ballet itself was OK....the orchestra was perhaps better in Swan Lake, but not by much.....it was once again almost entirely subs from what I could see, and the conductor did a good job holding them together, but didn't really do much else, I felt. The dancers were OK....it was nice to have Gretchen standing next to me telling me about all the technical things and if they were doing them well or not. (she dances ballet, and is really quite knowledgeable about it....certainly more than I am!) Sufficed to say that there were lots of technical imperfections (she confirmed my suspicion that the walking should not have been so loud, for instance, and that the choreography seemed not to be technically demanding to the dancers at all) All in all though everything looked really pretty, and the costumes and sets were certainly lovely as all get-out. They really spared no expense on the costumes, especially, except perhaps for Carabasse's dress, which looked suspiciously like the Queen of the Night's costume in their production of The Magic Flute. Perhaps I'm just making it up, though.....I mean, what are the odds that they'd recycle a costume like that for an entirely different person! I knew that certain themes from the Disney movie of Sleeping Beauty were taken from this ballet, but I had no idea that every single theme in the movie was in the ballet! The one I really got a kick out of was the Maleficent theme (if you don't remember....watch the movie again....it's a fantastic movie, and I can't exactly hum the theme for you!) I expected it to be on of Carabasse's themes (since she's the evil færie) but for the first three acts I never heard it. Just as I was beginning to entertain the notion that the Sherman Brothers had actually written an original theme for the movie, I heard it in the 3rd act. Now, in the ballet version, the 3rd act basically is a little coda to the plot (by which I mean NOTHING HAPPENS....not that anything ever REALLY happens in ballet.....but nothing even pretends to happen), wherein Aurora and the Prince get married and all these fairy tale characters come to their wedding, like Rotkäppchen (Little Red Riding Hood) and the Wolf, Aladdin, some bluebirds or something, and Puss in Boots. And what do you know if the scary Maleficent music was nothing more than the Puss in Boots dance! It was hilariously choreographed, too.....it was a pas de deux with both dancers in large cat helmet-mask things, and of course big red boots on Puss in Boots. On every diminished tremelo chord (do-doo-doo...baaaaaa [while I tremble my hands in the air]) they would turn to each other and fight with their claws really fast, like one does when sort of making fun of a cat. (I don't think I've ever seen a cat do that....they're usually a bit more economical with their strokes, if I'm not mistaken, rather than just randomly flailing for no reason) It was hilarious!! I managed to get some nice curtain call shots, including one before the curtain to catch the ridiculous gold glitter that fell during the finale. It was definitely tons of fun!
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