Bombs are exciting, right? -- Part 2

As promised, the second part of my super exciting blog post chronicling the last week.

Last Tuesday I attended my second opera(s) ever.  In my Junior year of high school I saw Turandot and left with mixed feelings.  On the 24th, however, I once again had my views of the art form rearranged by two contemporary pieces.  The event was called Opera Shots, and although there was a bar at the theatre, I played the part of teetotaler for the evening.  The "Shots" portion of the event's title referred to the length of each opera -- short, tidy, and efficient.

The first piece was as unorthodox as they come.  Rather than booming vibrato and sweeping landscapes of strings, we were faced with a combination of modern dance and harsh dissonance.  The set revolved around a three-sided "room".  Projectors were used to change the lighting and details on each wall, creating ghostly apparitions and spreading darkness as the music shifted moods.  Definitely a cool show, but the interpretive dancing ended up being nothing more than a distraction to me.

The second piece was a far more traditional piece, centered upon a military officer on his first tour with an entrenched regiment.  He arrives in the wartorn village, initially delighted by the merrymaking he sees around him, but as he heads to the nearby front, he realizes that conditions are far worse than he could have ever imagined.  The sets were expansive and used visceral details such as blood and burnt books in order to immerse the audience in the opera.  Although I thought I'd be more engaged with the modern piece, the second was really my favorite.

Much to the dismay of much of our group, our first event on Wednesday the 25th required us all to get up early.   The reason?  To see Emanuel Ax teach a piano master class at 10am.  For those who don't know, a master class is a musical learning session in which one or more students -- two in our case -- play a piece in front of a "master" musician, and then have their playing picked apart by the master in order to point out specific areas that may need improvement.  Watching the two students play for forty minutes collectively was really enjoyable, but sitting through the other hour and twenty minutes of criticism (however polite) was yawn-inducing.

Later that evening we had the privilege to see the Afro-Cuban All Stars, an eclectic Cuban jazz band that had us all up on our feet and dancing for the last half of their set.  I loved every minute of it, but the English aren't the best dancers.

Funky Cuban beats.  

The final major planned event of the week was "Big and Small", an adaptation of the German play Gröss und Klein.  Starring Cate Blanchett (Lord of The Rings trilogy, Robin Hood, Life Aquatic), the play unfolded like a contemporary Alice in Wonderland, complete with rooms that changed sizes, clever wordplay, and completely ridiculous characters (although after the play's conclusion, they don't seem so absurd after all).  Even though parts of it were so surreal that the story seemed to dissolve, the acting was mesmerizing and I'd recommend it to anyone else lucky enough to be in London.

There was, of course, one more unplanned event which occurred yesterday:  an incident involving one angry office worker, several hostages, and a homemade gasoline bomb.  This happened just a few blocks from the apartment, so it was pretty exciting at the time.  Luckily, I don't believe anyone was hurt, and the situation was resolved last night.

Click here for more info on the bomb threat.

Well, that's that for this post.  We're going to see some classical music in a couple hours, so I'll try to post more whenever I can.

By the way: My parents brought to my attention the fact that comments were previously disabled to anyone who didn't have a google account.  I've corrected the issue and now the comment section is open to everybody.  Fire away!