Ooooaaaaaaah-ah-ah-ah-ah!!!!

I went to the opera. (The title of this post is supposed to be opera singing, in text form.) I'm not entirely sure I like opera, but it seemed like the right thing to do. Especially when I saw it was Evgeny Onegin, which is Pushkin. I didn't love the story, but what can you expect from translated poetry, really? Until I get around to learning the language myself, I'm willing to trust generations of Russians on this one. So anyway, opera. I've only seen one other opera, Don Giovanni, and I thought it was gaudy and silly. I did like the singing, I just sort of hated everything else about it. I liked this one much more. The performance was a lot less cheesy, for one thing. And they did some interesting things with the lighting and the costumes. The first act was all green; the second was red; the last was black and white and gold and silver. (Sort of like in the movie Hero, if I'm allowed to compare Russian opera with Hong Kong cinema.) Oh, and the singing was good, too. How would I know good opera singing from bad, really, but the blowhard opera buff in my box was also impressed. He tried to tell me that "Hungarian is second cousin to Russian" (it isn't) but even so, someone who travels across oceans solely to see opera can probably tell good singing from bad. Oh, and it was super cheap. The blowhard says opera here is state-subsidized. I think I paid about $30 to sit right next to what he called the king's box. The only downside was that I couldn't follow the plot much at all. Above the stage was a big screen (you know those screens that lit-up words made out of dots move across? I forget what they're called) that showed the words (supertitles?), but they were in Hungarian. And the singing was in Russian. Oh, well. Like I said, I didn't love the story anyway.

I also played harmonica for a bit in a square near the opera house, my most public performance so far. Two little kids may have been alternating between watching and hiding behind a bench, or maybe they were just playing. And someone talked to me. She was speaking Hungarian so I can't entirely rule out the possibility that she was telling me I rock, but I'm pretty sure she just wanted directions.