Opera, opera everywhere

(One of the 2 Montpellier Opera houses at night. This one is in the center of town. This is the Opera Comedie)

I realized that I have been lax on my posting of my recent opera goings. First is the King Arthur opera. That was an AWESOME show. It was really like a cartoon/farce on stage. I really enjoyed it and it was a huge change from traditional opera. They grilled hot dogs on stage, for real. We could smell them all the way up in the balcony where we were sitting. Our seats, by the way, were possibly the worse seats I have had in quite some time. We were in the house left balcony and could only see like half of the stage. Though, if we stood up, which we actually did all the time, we could see just fine. Thankfully no one was behind us and we still enjoyed the show though it was entertaining standing up, looking at the stage and then leaning down to read the super-titles. Anyway, there were a lot of random scenes that I found really entertaining. The show was very loosely based around King Arthur's rise to the throne. There was a scene with a polar bear coming out of a refrigerator and penguins ice skating around. There were some skiers skiing around the stage on plastic sheeting that they had laid out. The conductor was something else. The first act, he jumped up on stage in a kilt. There were a ton of entracts where he would jump up on stage and talk to the stagehand/actor. Since they changed the set a lot, they had a lot of filler. In addition to the kilt, the conductor was wearing some crazy pants, a yodeling outfit complete with knickers and finally a tux. Other entracts included yodeling between the conductor and the stagehand and even silent Mexican-style singing. The show was only an hour and 45 minutes with no real intermission to speak of. There were shooting stars at one point of the show which were achieved by throwing glow sticks back and forth across the back scrim. It was awesome! I don't think I have laughed more at an opera ever.

The second opera I just saw on Tuesday was actually 2 operas in one night. The first act, the first opera Sancta Susana was a 28 minute German piece about a nun who, right before she took her vows, slept with a guy behind the church. The piece was a bit lame and not super exciting EXCEPT for the FULL MALE NUDITY. That was pretty cool. There was full female nudity as well but that wasn't as impressive for me. In the opera, the nun was having a flashback and we got to see the dirty nun's memories of sleeping with the guy behind the church. One second there was a guy on stage in only pants, the next second the pants are GONE! The opera itself wasn't that good or particularly interesting but the nudity made it worth the time alone. There was a lot of collapsing onstage with great emotion, a minimal set with a cross and flame and really quite overly dramatic. At the end of the show, 16 nuns plus a mother superior came out to yell at the nun who was having this crisis of conscious. I thought that seemed a bit odd since the show only had 4 people on stage for the first 26 minutes (the nun, the nun she was telling her story to and the naked man and woman).

The third opera (or 2nd of the night if you are keeping track) was called Le château de Barbe-Bleue (Blue-Beard's Castle). This show was much more theatrical and relatively entertaining. The hour long show was in some sort of German-derived language but I couldn't tell you for sure. There were only 2 actors on stage and I don't know if I have seen 2 actors with less chemistry. The show is about Blue-Beard bringing his fiancee to his castle to start their life together and she insists on getting into the 7 locked doors that she's noticed in the very dark, gloomy, sad castle. The African American Blue-Beard,who was probably in his late 50's, had the oddest costume. He was wearing a black suit with no shirt underneath. The suit was shiny and a bit ill fitting in the chest area. We got to see his belly a couple times. The white woman was wearing a very poorly designed white shimmery dress that didn't allow for much movement. She was really stiff, yet was supposed to be sexy and alluring. She wasn't actually that old (probably in her 30's) but her hair and makeup made her look to be in her late 50's as well. I wasn't sure why they wanted her to look older since she would have been more attractive without the makeup and strange hair bun. She also probably would have been more alluring and sexy if she was more age appropriately costumed and madeup.

Anyway, the show, while the plot wasn't that great, was well staged. There were a bunch of archways that lit up. They flew, rotated, moved back and forth and were used as the 7 doorways that the fiancee begged to be opened. We find out that one door hid the arsenal that had weapons with dried blood on them, one door hid the torture chamber, another door hid a lake of tears, and on and on until we get to the final door where we find a room that hid the 3 bodies of his previous wives. They were actually portrayed by three women standing in the door ways. No dead bodies on stage, sorry to get your hopes up. I'm still enjoying all the operas I have had the pleasure of seeing. I can't wait for the next one.