Deutsche Oper (no -a) Berlin
Last night I went to the opera. I put on my sexy boots and double-diamond patterned tights and too much makeup (I wiped my lipstick off on the U-bahn) and went to the OPERA. Ah, the culture. It was Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, which was a) completely appropriate for me to see as it’s in German, and hello, I’m in Germany, and b) so much prettier and lighter than Wagner’s “dude steals ring, gods get mad” cycle which I find to be oppressively intense and boring at the same time.
it didn’t look like this
I was a little scared when we came in late- everyone onstage was wearing black and white and there was no set- type stuff on the stage and I thought that hoo, crap, I was in for three hours of sprockets set to classical music. That wasn’t the case however- there were soon Egyptians and ninjas with light sabers and adolescent boys with voices like angels, and beautiful illuminated yellows and reds, not to mention the Rousseau-like jungle tableau with yes, a giant, GIANT, flying monkey so distracting that I could barely think of anything else that night. Oh, except for the fact that Mozart was a Mason, and filled this opera with its imagery, which I find to be extremely creepy: http://www.indianafreemasons.com/imosanctum/mozartandmasonry.html. The other creepy things that shouldn’t happen in German opera, as my friend pointed out, are white guys in black face and middle-aged sopranos trying to break it down like Michael Jackson. Wrong. Just wrong.
But, all in all, a very enjoyable evening. I left whistling the duet between Papageno and Papgena from the end of the second act while tall cuteness hummed the Queen of the Night aria as we retrieved our coats and headed for drinks. I feel so much more refined now. Good night.
