Opera

Well, since it is I suppose about time I post about last Friday, here goes: last Friday I went to the Barber of Seville with my skister and some friends. Before I went, I went to my sister’s apartment carrying my bag of dress-up clothes so that she could do my hair for me. She did and I think it turned out quite nice. We primped at her place for a good while and then went off to meet our friends outside the supermarket on my street. Stupidly, I wore my heels to walk that distance so my feet were in pain by the time we arrived. I also felt a little funny walking down a busy street in the afternoon wearing opera attire. Apparently though I looked pretty good because some dude (Turkish?) outside a kebab place said “I likez zee red.” I took that to mean me, since I was wearing my red dress. Anyhow, I think I may use that phrase now, the accent makes it sooo quotable!

So we made it to the meeting spot only to find that half of the friends who were supposed to go were missing. In fact, it was just me, sister and J. who informed us that T. was in the hospital and D. was with her and they hadn’t been able to get a hold of Jose (I use his name because there are so many Joses in Spain that he’s not traceable) the waiter that D. recently started dating. Fortunately, T. was fine; they were just waiting for some test results that were taking forever and so called to tell us they’d meet up with us at the theater. So we went and took the bus to the center to get some dinner before the opera.

The bus ride was fun - we got to hear some girl’s life story probably titled “The Trouble with Roommates” or “I Don’t Live with Babies.” Anyhow, eventually we got off the bus and walked over to Bib Rambla and found a pizza place where we met up with R. and her friend who was visiting. We had a nice chat and dinner and then we went over to the theater while R. and friend went home. We were ridiculously early apparently (20 minutes) so had to wait around a bit for the doors to open. We went in, found our seats, tried to figure out what the heck the painting on the ceiling was supposed to be, and generally just enjoyed the pre-opera excitement. At 9:00 (when it was supposed to start) people started to show up. 15 minutes later they announced that the projector with the translation in Spanish was broken (to a chorus of aawwws!) and then the prelude started. Still no T. and D…

Ahh, the prelude! It was exactly the same as the Rabbit of Seville, so I had the whole Bugs Bunny short going through my head. It was a good time. Then the opera happened. It was really funny although we didn’t understand much of it. The acting pretty much got across the plot and any gaps in our grasp of it, J. obligingly filled. There really isn’t much to say about it, it was a lot of impressive singing and rather goofy acting. Perfect. At each break, we went and looked for T. and D. but they didn’t show up with Jose until right before the last act. It was a shame they missed so much!

Afterwards, Jose took us out for tapas at a bar nearby. We hung out for a while drinking our tintos and practicing our Spanish with Jose. Then D. and Jose went off to go dancing or something and the rest of us walked home. All in all, we had a lovely time. Here’s the group, sorry the quality isn't so great for some reason: