Rainy Thursday at the Opera

I love rain. There's very little that I enjoy more than the feeling of a rainy day, as I sit all warm and cozy inside listening to the wind and the pitter-patter of the rain hitting the windows. I love the smell of wet earth, and the extra vibrancy that the rain gives anything green.

I do not, however, enjoy it quite as much when walking about in soaking wet shoes and pants that I just discovered were a little too long, as they sopped up more water with every step I took. It wouldn't have been so bad if I had been on my way home, where I could change into something warm and dry, but I was not. TC had gotten tickets to the COC's performance of La Bohème last night, so after work I headed to the southwest corner of Queen St. W and University Ave. where we had arranged to meet. We then walked a couple of blocks to Jack Astor's to have dinner, and back to the Four Seasons Centre in time for the opera. By that time, I was soaked from the knees down.

I was still looking forward to the performance, though, since La Bohème is one of those operas that everyone has heard about, and the COC usually puts on a wonderful show. Not so much the case this time. It started at 7:30, and finished a little before 10:30, which is pretty standard. However, normally there is only one intermission. Last night there were three, each around half an hour long. So of the three hours that we were there, half of it was spent sitting and waiting for the next act to start. I could understand the need for the intermissions - there was a set change between eact act, so some time was needed to make it happen. But the sets were so complex that it took forever, which made it difficult to get back into the performance once it finally started up again. It would have been far better, in my humble opinion, to use simpler sets that set up quickly and allowed the story to flow in a less disjointed manner, especially since the location of each scene wasn't really all that important as the story was completely character driven.

Added to this was the fact that directly behind us sat a young woman of high school age who insisted on emitting a high pitched, whiny, mewling "Oh!", every time one of the characters sang or did anything that could be considered romantic (i.e. every 5 minutes), as though it was necessary to inform everyone around her that this was a moment of pathos and wasn't it just precious? By the end of act 3 I was ready to toss her off the balcony. We were five stories up.

Otherwise, it was thoroughly enjoyable :) The performances were all fairly good or better, and there's a reason it's one of the most popular operas of all time. You can't go completely wrong when you have good material.

That being said, I was glad to get home and put on dry jammies, curl up in bed and listen to the wind blow the rain against our window until I fell asleep.