An outdoor classical concert at Ravinia has several aspects I wish existed in my everyday life: good food, good music and an old Indian man walking around with a sign telling people their kids need to shut the hell up.
Yes, the Concert Project has gone operatic, with the most recent installment coming from Ravinia Park where last night, Hvorostovsky was Rigoletto.
I would like to thank cut-and-paste for that last clause, which otherwise I would still be trying to type.
Proving I have made some very good choices in my life over the last year or so, my ladyfriend wanted to spend her birthday at an outdoor Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert at Ravinia. A picnic blanket and some friends, food and booze seems like a perfect way to celebrate another year, does it not?
I have never been to Ravinia before, but a brief Metra ride got us and our sacks of wine and blankets to the Highland Park park. We met up with the rest of the party and began our picnic feast, like real grown-ups.
Unlike real grown-ups, we kept laughing at the massive ass-crack of the man sitting in front of us. It was like he had strapped a belt across two muskmelons.
But onto Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto.
The show wasn't quite an opera and it wasn't quite a symphony. Singers were playing the parts while standing in front of the musicians, but they weren't in costume and they weren't quite acting. It was a classical concert with singers sort of miming out an opera.
Dmitri Hvorostovsky's means of portraying the hunchbacked Rigoletto was to thrust his arms out like a Monty Python Gumby and when Rigoletto's daughter was supposed to be dead and in a sack (read the book), the incredible Eglise Gutierrez demonstrated this by sitting in a chair. Sitting = dead.
That's not to disparage either fine performer (I really don't want a white-haired Siberian baritone mad at me). The night was about the music, not about how well Hvorostovsky could pretend to be a hunchback.
Standing and walking around the lawn area was an old Indian man, apparently tasked by Ravinia with ambling about holding a sign of the type Wile E. Coyote usually uses to say "YIPE."
But this one said, "Quiet, please during the performance. Please have respect for your fellow concertgoers and please supervise your children."
A guy specifically going around to tell people their kids need to shut up? Awesome.
We weren't sitting with a view of the stage, but rather a view of a screen set up to show the musicians. It was great -- like an old drive-in movie. And a translation of the text was below, sort of a combo karaoke/follow the bouncing ball. The Rigoletto Horror Picture Show.
It was remarkable and telling to be able to follow the plot. But the translation was a bit dry. The basic problem was that the translator opted for a literal translation as opposed to a poetic or aesthetic one.
In short, the words sounded great together in Italian, but then we got sentences like "Some demon has sent you to spoil our revels. But spare us your ravings. You have offended our sovereign."
It's accurate, but it reads like a bad dub of a 70s kung fu movie. Even "99 Red Balloons" made sure the words rhymed.
Beyond all the jokes about ass cracks, Nena and coyotes (and some alt-text that compares the opera star to John Larroquette), I do love the opera. And I had never seen Rigoletto before.
As the light dimmed and the stars began to twinkle, a light breeze flicked away the waning daytime heat. We were full of bread, cheese and brownies.
What we were doing wasn't cool. It wasn't a hip thing for people leaving their 20s to waste a Saturday night on. We should have been getting drunk off our asses in an overpriced Wicker Park bar with the tight-pants brigade. We should have poured ourselves into Wrigleyville to watch Sunday morning's wolf dates take form. That's what the cool kids do on a Saturday night.
Fuck cool. Go to the opera.
Print
E-mail
Paul Dailing
Paul Dailing (pictured standing in front of the World's Largest Boot), now has a different haircut. He's also lost a bit of weight since that picture was taken, but not as much as he likes to think. More
Comments
Post new comment