I managed to sit through two hours of Mozart's 'Don Giovanni', but could not muster the fortitude to endure four. B had bought tickets to a live broadcast from the New York Metropolitan Opera's performance of this gem, being shown in a local movie theatre. I was amazed that so many people were there at 11 a.m., prepared to skip lunch and hang in for the entire opera. Calgary is a city of youth, but I would wager every senior in the city was at this performance yesterday.
Thankfully, subtitles translated the Italian, but a lot of the dialoge was strangely archaic. "Beat me for what I have done and I will kiss your hands," sings one heroine to her jilted fiance. Don Giovanni romps through the opera, raping and attacking thousands of women -- all seen as our hero simply being "irrestible" in the extreme. I think I would have preferred it in the Italian without the subtitles.
To love opera one has to summon up the retro brain; I snuck out after Act I.
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