Sunday, March 30, 2008

Opera Experience

Yesterday, I watched Opera for the first time in my life. Very rich and interesting experience.
Experience went beyond my initial goal - to check out art form called Opera. AIDA Opera performance takes you to ancient Egypt. Its glamorous, its colorful, and its huge.
Check out program website here.
Why is this different?
AIDA Opera is a spectacular performance - More than 200 on stage performers have put together this show. Show succeeds in taking you to ancient exotic Egypt.
Show brings alive various sets from Royal palace at Memphis to moonlit bank of Nile.

I was wondering how am I supposed to understand "Italic" Opera. But they actually display translations on electric display board.
We are quite comfortable with concept of 'sub titles' for foreign language movies. Actually having sub-titles for 'live' performance was interesting!

Honestly, I could not understand much of the music piece. But visuals were good enough to keep me at my seat for more than 3.5 hours. ( yes its a long show, with 2 intermissions)

I could not stop comparing this show with Marathi Mega Show called "Janata Raja" (Knowing/ Almighty King). Janata Raja was also huge colossal of 200+ artists and larger than life sets.

How Janata Raja performance would scale if given all the resources these opera's enjoy?
-I guess that day is not too far. So for the moment, lets wait and watch