Hello reader!
I must
apologise for the absence of posts in recent months. Things got pretty hectic
at the Festival I'm interning at leaving me little time to attend to my blog!
But hopefully I'll be back to more regular postings soon, and here is a short
one to get back on track!
So last week
I FINALLY got round to watching a production from the Royal Opera House Covent
Garden streamed live to screens across the UK. It's something I've been meaning
to do since I first saw the posters on the tube as a teenager. I thought it
would be a great thing to do- try out Opera for FREE! That way, if I didn't
understand it so well, or hadn't had the time to get to know the plot
beforehand, or even just didn't enjoy it, it wouldn't matter so much having not
paid lots of money for a ticket. So I bought myself a little picnic [including
strawberries and chilled cans of Gin and diet Tonic- M&S just keeps getting
better and better!] and made my way to Canada Square Park in Canary
Wharf.
I didn't
fancy sitting on the concrete of Trafalgar Square, having only been reminded
about the event by twitter on the way to work and being sadly sans cushions and picnic blanket.
However the event organisers had thought of this- plastic sheets were provided,
even though I was happy to sit on the gress, and even BETTER... INFLATABLE
CUSHIONS! A Brilliant idea for sitting through 3 hours of Opera.
Boy was I in for a treat. Puccini’s Tosca, not to be confused with the play
upon which it is based La Tosca by
Victorien Sardou, is set in one of my favourite cities- Rome- and is as powerful
and dramatic as the architecture of that city.
 |
| Sant'Andrea della Valle, where our story begins... |
Now I won’t go into details of the
plot, I don’t want to spoil it for those of you who haven’t yet seen it, but it
is a romantic rollercoaster. The combination of the swelling music and poetic language
acts almost as an aphrodisiac, to the point where I’ve frantically scribbled in
my note-pad:
“SO ROMANTIC...I feel like I’m in love with both of them [the lovers-
Cavaradossi and Tosca] ... and the entire
world... when he sings about Tosca’s eyes it is the lovliest thing.”
Ok. So realistically, it was
bordering on cheesy at times, and a little over the top- “never have I loved life so much”- but I LOVED it. It made me feel
so happy and alive. It made me feel. I laughed, nearly fell in love
and nearly cried, all in the space of 3 hours on a patch of grass in Canary
Wharf. Most importantly of all I knew I had to experience it again.
In Act 2 of the opera, Tosca sings “I lived for art and love”. I too live
for art and love. Opera, you have a new fan.
Thanks for reading!
Jennifer
