The Best and Worst...

This has definitely been a trip full of performances. Since the title of the institute is "Mozart and his German Operas," you can imagine that performance is a big part of our experiences and discussion.

The performances have ranged from the sublime to the horrendous to the "Huh?". We have seen some incredible operas. There are two opera companies here--the Staatsoper (State Opera), where Martin Short works, and the Volksoper (People's Opera), which used to be lesser in quality, but apparently has improved a lot over the last few years. We saw Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio--music and singing was sublime, but they changed Mozart's comedic ending from happily ever after to the four heros being killed. Huh?!?! I also saw Tosca and La Forza del Destina. Again, awesome music, but the staging left me wondering what kind of parallel universe I was in. Cowboys in Verdi?

One of the best, and possibly weirdest, was the marionette performance of The Magic Flute. Almost the entire opera--a great recording from the Berlin Philharmonic. And what these puppeteers could do with those marionettes was astonishing! I was so taken into the scale of the performance that I was fooled into feeling that the puppets were life-sized. And when the puppeteers stood behind the puppets to take a bow, I absolutely could not compute how huge the people looked for about 5 seconds. I think the thought that popped into my head was, "Wow, they found giants to be puppeteers!" Totally worth the money--I've never seen anything like it!

And now for the worst performance yet...I went to Bratislava, Slovakia to check out Eastern Europe (a half day trip was perfect). As we sat and had coffee, where we were served by a woman who was absolutely stone-faced. I think it was left-over from the Communist era. There was a "stand-still" street performer in my line of sight. He was completely silver, standing on a silver box. His gig is, to stand absolutely still, like a statue, and when people put money in his hat, he would move like a robot. So, the whole key to his financial success is actually standing still so people would pay to see him move. Well, this guy was the worst stand-still street performer in the history of the universe. He would take up his freeze position, and within 10 seconds, he would be distracted by a bird to his left, or someone walking past, or he would answer his phone, or get down off his box to look in the store window or eat a snack. Seriously! It was the highlight of my trip to Slovakia. Oh, and there was a pretty inner city and a very ugly rest-of-the-city.

So, if I ever am in need of a second career, I'm pretty sure I could outperform that guy in the streets of Bratislava and take his job. Good to know.