Ma no, Manon!

Look how luck you guys are - two posts in... a very short amount of time! I spoil you. But I figured I should probably share how extraordinarily cultured I have become in the last two days. For all you poor, poor plebes.

So. Friday I went to a concert. Not the hard rocking, dancing in the isles kind. The kind where you sit and watch 4 men in suits sway in time with their bows - also known as a string quartet! The theatre in Siena that we went to was completely adorable. It had little boxes that sat about 4 people, as well as the standard seats on the floor. It was small, but just for sound and intimacy and so forth.

The quartet played Schubert first and then a very strange modern piece by a Chinese composer - apparently it was the first time it had been played, ever. They sort of stroked their strings with the bows very lightly for a while, which, if you know anything about string instruments, is a sort of dangerous sound. If you stroke too lightly, it's a weird squeaky whisper. It made it sound like they kept mis-starting. The whole thing was very a-tonal, without tune or melody or anything, and involved a lot of string plucking. It reminded me a bit of a radio - where the weird plucking and string stroking was the static between stations, and every so often we'd hit a brief bit of something that sounded melodious. I'm sure it was all very sophisticated and cultural but I couldn't read the description in the program to explain why I was supposed to enjoy it (because it was in Italian), so mostly I was just really annoyed. I had this thought that maybe it was some weird performance piece, where the musicians just screwed around with weird stuff until someone finally got fed up and screamed at them to cut it out! And then they would...

Anyway, the last piece was a Mendelssohn, which I enjoyed greatly. So all in all, it was a good time. Afterwards, we met up with a couple of friends for a drink before the last bus home (the concert started at 9 and wasn't done until 10:30 and the busses slow down after 10:30), which was nice, but I was exhausted by the time I got home.

Saturday was nice and lazy, as well as lovely and sunny (although still cold). I borrowed A Brave New World from the library here (one of the only books they had in English), so I spent a lot of the day reading that. It's the first time I've read it, and I'm flipping out. I'm so glad I didn't read this when I was younger, it's so much more awesome. I just want to write one big long thing about how awesome it is and what it's been making me think about, but I fear that would bore you. So just know that I'm thinking awesome stuff. If you want to participate in the interactive part of this blog, you can read it (it's super short) but I don't demand your participation... this time!

But that evening we went to the opera! And I was all dressed up (and by 'all' I mean I wore a dress). It was a loud bus ride to Florence at 5:30, and the opera started at 8:30 - we had time for a quick snack before taking our seats. The theatre was not as lovely as the one in Siena, but it wasn't bad (it's more modern). The opera was Manon Lescaut by Puccini.

Brief synopsis: Manon is a beautiful woman, who this dude, Des Grieux, falls super in love with. They run away to Paris, and her brother and an old dude who wants to marry her follower them. That's the first act. Somehow between the end of act one and the beginning of act two, Manon's brother manages to convince her to leave her lover and to marry the old guy, but she's bored with him because he's old and stuffy. She loves that he's rich though. I was a little unclear at this point - she doesn't want to be with him, but she obviously adores her fancy jewels and dresses and so forth. Anyway, her brother sees she's unhappy, gets Des Grieux to come see her, and they're about to run away when Manon has to stop to take all her jewels and consequently get's them arrested because she dilly-dallied. End of act two. Act three, she's in prison and about to be shipped off to America, but Des Grieux manages to convince the captain to let him go too. Between then and act four, they go to New Orleans and wander off into the desert in Louisiana (is there a desert in Louisiana?) and act four begins with them lost and super dehydrated. They sing about how life sucks for a long time, and then Manon takes forever to die. The end.

So. Thoughts. First, the moral of the story seems to be that chicks are crazy. Second, Manon (the pun on her name is the typical Italian phrase 'ma, no!', used for everything) is annoying. Seriously - she clearly didn't need that much convincing to leave Des Grieux for ugly-old-rich-dude. And then it's her greedy butt that gets her arrested, by trying to take her jewels with her. I, hopeless romantic that I am, was totally in love with Des Grieux - dude loved her even when she abandoned him, got herself arrested, and dragged him off to the desert. He could have just been like, "You know what? You're crazy. Peace!" and found himself a nice, sane girl to live a happy life with. But he didn't. And there's something admirable to me about that kind of devotion, no matter how ridiculously silly and/or stupid. But come on Manon! If I were you... well, I wouldn't be, because I would be eternally grateful to have someone that loyal and loving in my life. Her crazy makes my crazy look like tulips and kittens in comparison. 

I mentioned that I found his devotion sweet to Carlo (the film teacher). He said those men exist - I said they're impossible to find, and he replied, "Difficult. There is a difference between these - 'impossible' and 'difficult'."

On operas in general, I have the following thoughts: they're kinda fun! Although you sort of have to know the story - which, luckily, were were told before going. There's crazy costumes, funky sets, and nice music. They have subtitles - but because we're in Italy, they were in Italian and old Italian at that. So that was... fairly incomprehensible. Although it was kinda fun to try and figure some of it out. I actually understood (reading, of course) the gist of more than I expected. So high-fives for me!

The opera didn't end until super late though - we were back on the bus by midnight, and it's about an hour from Florence to Siena. They had the bus lights on and the radio playing over the loud speakers for much more of the trip that I would have liked, so try as I might, I didn't actually sleep that much. I dozed off for a bit but,  it was just not really happening for me. But that's okay.

Today, I am in centro at my little internet restaurant writing this little update. And pretty darn tired. But also much much more cultured.

Love, kisses, and well-wishes (see what I did there?)!

<3