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Cosi Fan Tutte
Feb. 6th, 2016 07:44 pmI am back from my journey to Bloomington to visit Caitlin and see the opera! It only lasted a night, so it was a bit of a whirlwind trip, but still quite nice.
We had a delightful dinner at Quaff On - or rather, we had a delightful appetizer and dessert at Quaff On; my entree was a prosciutto-poached pear pizza which turned out a little insipid. But that was all right, because the buffalo wings that we got for the appetizer were delightful, with a wonderful mouth-burning barbecue sauce - and this was the regular sauce, by the way; there was also a spicy and an extra spicy sauce, which presumably causes literal steam to blast out of your ears.
Then we went to the opera, Cosi Fan Tutte, which unfortunately I wasn't too keen on. Two soldiers, engaged to two sisters, pretend to go off to war - only to come back disguised as handsome strangers to test their fiancees' honor. This is the sort of thing that could be hilarious with a light-handed treatment, but unfortunately the opera plays it just a little too straight. The sisters (and later the fiances, as the sisters begin to succumb to the handsome strangers' charms) often seem truly distressed, which made it hard for me to find it funny.
Apparently - as the program informed us - not being too keen on Cosi Fan Tutte is a long and hallowed tradition. The Victorians regularly performed it with a significantly altered libretto, in which the girls figure out the imposture and go along with it to revenge themselves on their perfidious fiances.
I'm with the Victorians on this one. That story sounds way more fun.
But never fear! Despite the disappointing opera (which did have a gorgeous set, at least - they used the same set throughout, and just a few couches as props, which was ingenious and economical and charmed me), we had a lovely time. We watched a few episodes of Natsume's Book of Friends in the morning, and then met my grad school friend for sushi, and dropped by a bookstore and a bakery.
The bakery had this sign, which I thought was pretty perfect.
( My philosophy )
I can't believe I don't have a theater tag yet. Clearly I should correct that.
We had a delightful dinner at Quaff On - or rather, we had a delightful appetizer and dessert at Quaff On; my entree was a prosciutto-poached pear pizza which turned out a little insipid. But that was all right, because the buffalo wings that we got for the appetizer were delightful, with a wonderful mouth-burning barbecue sauce - and this was the regular sauce, by the way; there was also a spicy and an extra spicy sauce, which presumably causes literal steam to blast out of your ears.
Then we went to the opera, Cosi Fan Tutte, which unfortunately I wasn't too keen on. Two soldiers, engaged to two sisters, pretend to go off to war - only to come back disguised as handsome strangers to test their fiancees' honor. This is the sort of thing that could be hilarious with a light-handed treatment, but unfortunately the opera plays it just a little too straight. The sisters (and later the fiances, as the sisters begin to succumb to the handsome strangers' charms) often seem truly distressed, which made it hard for me to find it funny.
Apparently - as the program informed us - not being too keen on Cosi Fan Tutte is a long and hallowed tradition. The Victorians regularly performed it with a significantly altered libretto, in which the girls figure out the imposture and go along with it to revenge themselves on their perfidious fiances.
I'm with the Victorians on this one. That story sounds way more fun.
But never fear! Despite the disappointing opera (which did have a gorgeous set, at least - they used the same set throughout, and just a few couches as props, which was ingenious and economical and charmed me), we had a lovely time. We watched a few episodes of Natsume's Book of Friends in the morning, and then met my grad school friend for sushi, and dropped by a bookstore and a bakery.
The bakery had this sign, which I thought was pretty perfect.
( My philosophy )
I can't believe I don't have a theater tag yet. Clearly I should correct that.
