I remember opera from my music history days – that I didn’t enjoy it very much. The singing didn’t seem natural (although it’s not like auto-tuned singing is really that natural nowadays) and it just didn’t sound too good. But I’ve never been to an opera live, so maybe it was different hearing it in person.
We’re also turning 31 soon, so we were running out of time to take advantage of the Canadian Opera Company’s Opera for a New Age program (kind of like tsoundcheck but for Opera). We solved both of these problems on Monday by going to hear Death in Vegas.
The reason we decided to go now was because there was a good deal where you could get any seat in the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts for the $22 Opera for a New Age price. We scored seats on the Orchestra level.
We’ve been in the Four Seasons Centre before, I don’t remember quite for what but it was probably a free concert (maybe it was a Doors Open thing) but we had never been in the R Fraser Elliot Hall. It is very nice and much better than Roy Thompson Hall. The seats are wide and comfortable, and there was more than enough legroom. That was important because the opera was a snoozer. The music wasn’t interesting and it felt like the pacing was super slow (maybe I’m just used to TV show pacing now). It didn’t help that I read about the story on Wikipedia beforehand, then heard it at the Opera Talk before the show, then read it in the program, so I knew what was supposed to happen.
The story itself is actually quite interesting. There is a constant order vs chaos theme, and the structure of the story is well done with foreshadowing and thematic parallels. It would do well in English class.
Here’s the Globe’s review and the Toronto Star’s review
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