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Meditation on music
Nov. 28th, 2002 11:16 amAd Mundo Exteriore,
We went to the Metropolitan Opera for the first time last night to see Aida! It was really amazing, even though we were on the Family Circle level, which is at the top of the theater. Er...opera house, I mean. I'm not a big fan of Aida (Mother, who loves opera, tells me that I tend to like Puccini rather than Verdi, don't know why) but it was still pretty awesome to see real people sing. Radames had a rather pretty lyrical voice, but he wasn't too great at expression. Amneris started off as barely audible over the orchestra (which, by the way, was the most amazing part of the opera), but she was unspeakably wonderful in the last act. The chorus was far superior to anything on videotape. Amonasro (who was played by a replacement) had the best baritone I've ever heard, and I usually dislike the timbre of baritones. And...oh...Aida was great! She had the best voice by far, clearly world-class according to my mother. I'm not a terribly good judge of opera singers--I just can distinguish between the lyrical and dramatic tendencies in voices--but I think on the whole that was a good performance. (A little marred however by the inconsistency of most of the singers.) The choreography was awful and sloppy, but the sets were breathtaking, even from several hundred feet away, so I think it all balances out to a rather good bargain for our money.
I actually would love to see Turandot here. Mother says Hong Hei-Kyung, a Korean soprano, sings the part of Liu, who has a really gorgeous and heartbreaking aria before she dies. Aida doesn't move me as much--I keep thinking of how helpless Aida is and how pathetic. I would have refused to let myself submit to Radames' attentions, no matter how much I loved him, and stayed on Amneris' good side. Then, when the time was opportune, I'd have escaped to Ethiopia, back to my family. But then, I have been brainwashed with this idea that the good heroine gives up love for her family.
Which reminds me, the other day I was watching that bad Korean drama on KTV, and I realized that meeting your real birth parents would be the worst fate for a Korean child. I mean, filial duty governs all family relations, but how do you know what to do if you have two sets of parents? (Or just two mothers, in this case.) Do you owe your love to your birth mother, who after all went through all those labor pains, or to your adopted or stepmother, who went through the effort of raising you? See, the debt is twofold: parents gave birth to you and raised you. What a horrible dilemma. I concluded for the umpteenth time that I can understand why some people may want to divorce, but it is awful if you've already had children, and you should try at all costs to make the marriage work for their sake. I can list a million cases in which the children's lives were ruined by their parents' separation, and I think it's an utter betrayal of the parent-child relationship to inflict that kind of suffering.
I wanted to ramble on some more, but I'm going to see Harry Potter!
...Tari
We went to the Metropolitan Opera for the first time last night to see Aida! It was really amazing, even though we were on the Family Circle level, which is at the top of the theater. Er...opera house, I mean. I'm not a big fan of Aida (Mother, who loves opera, tells me that I tend to like Puccini rather than Verdi, don't know why) but it was still pretty awesome to see real people sing. Radames had a rather pretty lyrical voice, but he wasn't too great at expression. Amneris started off as barely audible over the orchestra (which, by the way, was the most amazing part of the opera), but she was unspeakably wonderful in the last act. The chorus was far superior to anything on videotape. Amonasro (who was played by a replacement) had the best baritone I've ever heard, and I usually dislike the timbre of baritones. And...oh...Aida was great! She had the best voice by far, clearly world-class according to my mother. I'm not a terribly good judge of opera singers--I just can distinguish between the lyrical and dramatic tendencies in voices--but I think on the whole that was a good performance. (A little marred however by the inconsistency of most of the singers.) The choreography was awful and sloppy, but the sets were breathtaking, even from several hundred feet away, so I think it all balances out to a rather good bargain for our money.
I actually would love to see Turandot here. Mother says Hong Hei-Kyung, a Korean soprano, sings the part of Liu, who has a really gorgeous and heartbreaking aria before she dies. Aida doesn't move me as much--I keep thinking of how helpless Aida is and how pathetic. I would have refused to let myself submit to Radames' attentions, no matter how much I loved him, and stayed on Amneris' good side. Then, when the time was opportune, I'd have escaped to Ethiopia, back to my family. But then, I have been brainwashed with this idea that the good heroine gives up love for her family.
Which reminds me, the other day I was watching that bad Korean drama on KTV, and I realized that meeting your real birth parents would be the worst fate for a Korean child. I mean, filial duty governs all family relations, but how do you know what to do if you have two sets of parents? (Or just two mothers, in this case.) Do you owe your love to your birth mother, who after all went through all those labor pains, or to your adopted or stepmother, who went through the effort of raising you? See, the debt is twofold: parents gave birth to you and raised you. What a horrible dilemma. I concluded for the umpteenth time that I can understand why some people may want to divorce, but it is awful if you've already had children, and you should try at all costs to make the marriage work for their sake. I can list a million cases in which the children's lives were ruined by their parents' separation, and I think it's an utter betrayal of the parent-child relationship to inflict that kind of suffering.
I wanted to ramble on some more, but I'm going to see Harry Potter!
...Tari
