APR 30, 16 .. THE OPERA .. CARMEN

Oh My ..

Sing it loud .. Sing it proud .. With Spanish Castanets distinctively clicking away in the background!

Here we go!

The Habenera from Carmen ..

I don’t love many ..

I don’t love much ..

But I love that music with the Carmen Touch!
In the Mongolian Cyrillic Alphabet the the C sound is a K / the R sound is a P / the H sound is an N.

Kapmeh is Carmen got it?
Looking down from my seat in the front row of the balcony.

“Oh Captain is this really necessary?” ..

Here is your link for all you never wanted to know about Carmen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen

To save you time here is my synopsis of Carmen.

Carmen was NOT a nice lady. Carmen was a fascinating gypsy temptress who played the ends-against-the-middle. Poor simple Don José fell head-over-heels for Carmen. Don José gave up his sweet gentle delicate childhood sweetheart Micaëla who loved him and was true to him. Thanks to Carmen stabbing another women and then getting Don José to free her from captivity  Don José lost his military career and fell-in-with neer-do-well smugglers. The last straw was when Carmen casually tossed Don José aside for the glamorous toreador Escamillo.

Don José was upset. Don José killed Carmen! DEAD !  

Carmen was long and Carmen was just a tad tedious. Carmen was raucous and manic and wild and colorful. I was entertained and enthralled and I actually became somewhat bored during the three full hours and two full intermissions with four acts to begin to get-a-clue as to finding out what was going on.

Then I raced home to ‘Google’ Carmen and fully understand what had happened. Carmen richly deserved what she got.

 After being treated like Mick Jagger or some visiting dignitary last week by the opera staff ..

https://babakaps.net/?p=20467

I fully behaved with regard to NOT sneaking in a photo or two of the action-on-stage during the performance.When the show was over and the time came for the encores I snapped away. Out of twenty some photos I got these three and they are marginal at best.

The orchestra’s maestro is well beyond-the-beyond. Heck with the actors. I would love to meet the maestro.And?

What is next?

Do I need to tell you or can you all guess what is next ..
The wonderful and the haunting music of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherezade has captivated me from youth.

In doing just bit-of-research about Scheherezade I know the story. What-is-it with these famous operas and ballets and their librettos?

In a moment of weakness I may just attend Sleeping Beauty as well.

Sign Me .. One Of The Luckiest Men Alive .. Cap ..

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Here we go loop de loop .. Here we go loop de li ..

Anger and my Attitude ..

One thing I strive to convey in all of my talks is that the best we can ever be is to be ‘normal’. I don’t care one-whit how hard anyone works on steps 6 and 7 we .. not one single one of us starting with myself .. will ever become perfect and always in all ways do the next-right-thing.

Anger is one simple letter away from Danger. Add a D to anger and you have Danger.

As do many very ‘normal’ people I have a temper. I can get very upset. I DO get angry. I do not always handle things letter-perfectly. So when it begins to erupt within me I say to myself ..

“Danger here. Stop. Take a quick inventory. Let’s not over react and do something stupid that I will regret.”

Case in point now follows:

At Carmen I had an elderly lady (who should have known better!) on my left and a teen-ager (who was obviously absorbed in herself and knew no better) on my right.

For all of the first three acts .. BOTH .. the elderly lady on my left and the ‘shit-for-brains’ teenager on my right .. off and on and off and on again and again .. kept using their large smart cell phones to do stuff (text .. read texts .. play games .. you name it take your pick).

Just as I was about to explode at one or at the other during the first three acts of Carmen they would stop using their smart phones and put them away and be quiet. Read – The two of them would give me some darkness to my left and to my right so I was NOT distracted by the extremely bright light emanating from their large smart phones. These things can light-up-a-room they are so bright.

In the rooms we have a saying: Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?

I kept opting to say and to do nothing.

I have a saying: One of us is going to get upset here. Better you than me.

During both the first and second full intermissions I scouted around for another seat opting not-to-disturb either of them. I had no luck. There were absolutely no other seats available (and I sat in and tried-out a fair number of alternative seats) that I was willing to sit in.

As I sat down in my seat as the fourth and final act was about to commence the elderly lady on my left caught my eye. Her purse was open and her smart phone was clearly visible. I made-as-if I was grabbing the smart phone and throwing it out into the air and told her in NO UNCERTAIN TERMS (which being Mongolian I am positive she did NOT understand) how rude it was and how extremely disturbing it was to me for her to be using her smart phone during the performance.

Call it the-look-in-my-eye .. Call it my body-language .. Call it the brutal vicious USMC hostility that I was emanating .. Call it what you will call it ..

BOTH SHE AND THE wide-eyed TEENAGER on my right who I was not even talking to ‘got it’.

Call it interesting but the elder lady on my left was with another elderly lady. This second elderly lady was looking at me with very appreciative eyes as I tore-into her lady friend sitting between the two of us. She was saying to me in her own ‘eye-language’ that she was happy with my lecture because her friend was also disturbing her.

I saw no more smart phones during the fourth act.

Next time at the opera / ballet I will simply get up and get an usher and deal with it front and center. I had absolutely no such distractions during MADAM BUTTERFLY or SWAN LAKE.

The lesson: IF you and if your committee inside of your heads are doing a job on you .. YOU are not alone. I have no idea why I put up with this for so long.

So committee you just shut up about it. Next time I am NOT going to tolerate such nonsense for so long.

Did I handle it properly? Could I have done a better job? Probably. I will never know for sure.

I will say this .. I can live-with-myself and with my actions. I am OK with the way things played out.

• ← APR 29, 16 .. MORE HODGE PODGE ..
• MAY 4, 16 .. GEEZ DAD! GIMME A BREAK .. /s/ Spring Snow in Mongolia →