A shower of unconnected thoughts had during a night at the Opera House.
The Building
Applause falls as a shower of rain on eucalyptus leaves
Air conditioning blows like a cool Wooloomooloo breeze
The natural tones of the building accentuate the notes caressed from the instruments.
The seats are designed to absorb acoustically when empty as a human body would. Do they absorb the music as a human I wonder?
Waxing lyrical and reading Paul Theroux's travels through Oceania got me looking around the hall at and speculating about the people I could see
An old couople unfriendly towards one another sit ramrod stiff in the circle. He gives the appearance of a Tower of Isolation at the start. By the end they are cuddled up as young lovers
A Majestic old lady regally sits in isolation behind the symphony... The only one to take a ticket 'in the round', like a small child brave enough to approach a stranger's fascinating pet.
A Korean family. The parents' exhortations in the interval to their 14 year old daughter are plain enough. Presumably a prodigy in their eyes, I wonder if she is one of the girls I have seen encouraged to play at Circular Quay with the same parents standing in the background. Is their dream to see her on the stage one day? Is it her dream? As she chews her gum I cannot tell if the girl is supremely confident of this outcome or supremely uninterested.
Two couples arrive late either side of me. One guy spends the second piece forcing his girlfriend to hold his hand. He does not see his flies are open. They do not come back after the interval. I am glad as I can stretch my legs again.
The other couple. He does not wait for her to sit down first. One of the violinists looks like him, Are they here to see him?
The Symphony Orchestra
One skirt too shiny black
The uniform black cannot squash out all personality. One woman manages a gothic comment with slashes in her sleeve and a defiant red streak in her hair
All the men are in the same suit
When applause time came, one woman looked as if she wasn't getting enough for her liking
The woman behind her was loving every second of it
The gothic woman hid her face with a veil of hair from the adulation.
One of the violinists seemed to be receiving her first applause and didn't know what to do with herself
The woman behind her had clearly had much acclaim as part of an ensemble and suggested it was her moment for the solo spotlight
An intellectual looking violinist looked as if she was thinking 'why are they applauding... all I did was pluck every third note."
The kettle drummer is fit! From what I can see of the trombonist, he's not bad either
Comments
Post a Comment