Thursday, January 29 was a momentous day for me. True, it was my friend Jan's birthday, but he has one of those every year. What I did that night I had never done before. I went to see an opera.
It was Faust by Charles Gounod. Katie's friend Eric has season tickets, and knows I love classical music and musical theater but have never been to the opera. (I tried once, buying a recording of Mozart's Magic Flute, but I didn't like that it wasn't in English. Part of the my enjoyment of musical theater is the simultaneous impact of the language and the music, and I couldn't attain that enjoyment as I listened to the German while reading an English translation.) I had to jump at the opportunity and took Eric up on his generous offer.
The opera is based on Goethe's version of Faust (part one). Since it was on my reading list, I decided to read the book first. It tells a tale of an aged scholar who has foregone many of life's pleasures in order to study. Then he makes a pact with the devil in order to regain his youth so he can go and debauch a young woman. This is my favorite quote from the book, from Faust's lamentations early in the book, saying how sad he is to have spent so much time studying. It sums up how I felt at the end of my Ph.D.:
And while I had very little trouble reading the English supertitles (projected above the stage concurrent with the French lyrics), the impact is still quite different from hearing the words in the native language. Still, it was a phenomenal experience. Thanks, Eric!
It was Faust by Charles Gounod. Katie's friend Eric has season tickets, and knows I love classical music and musical theater but have never been to the opera. (I tried once, buying a recording of Mozart's Magic Flute, but I didn't like that it wasn't in English. Part of the my enjoyment of musical theater is the simultaneous impact of the language and the music, and I couldn't attain that enjoyment as I listened to the German while reading an English translation.) I had to jump at the opportunity and took Eric up on his generous offer.
The opera is based on Goethe's version of Faust (part one). Since it was on my reading list, I decided to read the book first. It tells a tale of an aged scholar who has foregone many of life's pleasures in order to study. Then he makes a pact with the devil in order to regain his youth so he can go and debauch a young woman. This is my favorite quote from the book, from Faust's lamentations early in the book, saying how sad he is to have spent so much time studying. It sums up how I felt at the end of my Ph.D.:I've studied now PhilosophyThe production by the Minnesota Opera was very nice. They had a ballet company worked into the cast, which made for phenomenal staging. I was also very fond of the set, which looked like a piece of modern art sculpture, and also the costumes, particularly the non-traditional Mephistopheles:
And Jurisprudence, Medicine,--
And even, alas! Theology,--
From end to end, with labor keen;
And here, poor fool! with all my lore
I stand, no wiser than before
And while I had very little trouble reading the English supertitles (projected above the stage concurrent with the French lyrics), the impact is still quite different from hearing the words in the native language. Still, it was a phenomenal experience. Thanks, Eric!
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