Review: The Opera. Don Giovanni.

I was very generously given a free ticket to the opera on Friday afternoon, to go with a friend instead of her other friend. Although it was a very last minute rushed thing and I didn't feel properly dressed for it it was still a lovely evening. We ate dinner in the Opera House bistro! It's weird, like fancy Macdonalds. I had an amazing buttery mustard on my salmon.

The thing about opera, though, is that it's an endurance. It's great, it's fancy and beautiful and a wonder of human creative achievement, but it's also 3 hours of singing in another language. Without much leg room. Half way through act 2, I'm struggling to keep my eyes open because it's 10pm and I've had a hard week, and the surtitles were malfunctioning.

Don Giovanni is the sort of opera Terry Pratchett was thinking about when he wrote Maskerade. It has masks, deceptions, seductions and stupid obsessions, and a high level of implausibility. The Sydney Opera House production looked great, with a very deep set built with a sort of slopey forced perspective effect and nice lighting. One of the lead women was a little off, in my opinion: she sang with lots of passion and wobbly effects, but she wasn't very accurate on the high notes. She did have an amazingly thin waist, though. 

If you ever go to the opera and have time, you can hear a pre-opera talk, sitting informally on the steps at the top harbour foyer area thing, which from what we caught was quite informative.