A Night At The Opera And Not A Marx Brother In Sight

I had to exchange an opera ticket for Saturday matinee to fix a clash with the MTC, so tonight I went to see TheBarber Of Seville. It's an opera I always enjoy. It's funny and any silliness in the plot is deliberate. And, let's face it, most opera IS silly, no matter how beautiful the music. My favourite idiocy in an opera is the one where a man gets a blind date with a girl and commits suicide when she won't go out with him again. But it takes him ages to die, giving her time to sing a long aria and then say," Why, he is dying!" I think I may have been one of those who laughed loudest at the parody in Terry Pratchett's Maskerade. At the end of Turandot the other week, I couldn't help thinking that the prince and Turandot deserved each other. Yeesh! The man ignores all warnings, then, when he wins the prize, somehow, gives her a sporting chance to kill him anyway, costing the life of the brave girl who loves him, and even then, he TELLS the icy bitch his name. But The Barber is a delightful comedy by a man who had an amazing life of his own(go look up Pierre Beaumarchais in Wikipedia)and is as much satire as anything else. And this production, which has been around for some time, was done in 1920s costume, with a background set that was, as I recall, meant to be the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda! Dr Bartolommeo has a surgery in his house with patients coming and going and being left in the hands of Berthe, his housekeeper/nurse because he keeps being distracted by all the bizarre goings-on. A nice way to spend an evening, even if I do have to be up at six as usual. Good night!