Rigoletto and Gilda let us know how much they adore each other, all in all it just took a bit too long.
The night itself I did not enjoy it very much, at some point I was a bit fed up with all the sentences
that took a minute each because of the stretched endings and I already had a headache before the
opera started. Later on, after thinking about it, I kind of liked it and since we’re just reading Romeo
and Juliet with English class, it reminded me of that in a way. The story was well acted and the setting
was well thought of. I do think the singing these people do is incredible. Especially Gilda had some
very high notes and Rigoletto of course had a lot of text. Naturally I loved La Donna è mobile, it was
the single thing a recognized and it still is very catchy. Verdi was right about this air looking at how
often it is used even nowadays.
Also, apparently, we were the only ones who did not take it all that serious. Showing up in sneakers
while everyone else wore suits and dresses and had this intelligent expression on their faces. This did
not really help with the process of me changing my mind about opera and letting go of my prejudice.
For the first opera in my life it might have been better if it only took about one and a half hour,
almost two and a half hours was too long for me to keep paying attention. Personally I don’t think
that some of the scenes had to be that long either, the audience doesn’t consist out of small children
it seems to me. My conclusion is that it was very well performed; the opera, musicians and ‘actors’
were great but opera is just not something for me, maybe when I’m a little more culturally
developed.