On a chilly northern night, a thousand fools gathered under a starless, moonless sky to watch an open-air performance of Richard Strauss's operaGundam WingElektra, played out on a stage the size of a football-pitch covered with piles of gravel and pools of blood-coloured water gushing out of stacks of shipping containers, with 7-12 metre tall puppets hovering around suspended from cranes and covered by a large troupe ofdancerswrigglers clad in skin-coloured wetsuits. I kid you not.
As the last painful, unintelligible bout of shrieking came to a triumphant end and the audience dutifully began a half-hearted round of applause, two conflicting emotions warred within my heart: rage--I cut our stay in sthlm short and paid way, way too much for this??!--and relief--at last it was over and I could go home.
To be fair, the music was good, and the visuals were... cool... and I could see some of the appeal, both of opera as well as of this particular performance... but the overall experience left me so dissatisfied that, had I not been with the woman of my dreams using her nuclear-powered hands to keep mine warm and naughty thoughts to keep me awake, I would have been absolutely fuming. As it is, I've made a solemn vow never to go to any goddamned opera ever again if I can help it. And to bury all memories of this "culture capital" year as soon as I can, because, so far, it's mostly been a buncha garbage for desperate culture-starved northerners with more money than sense.
It's possible I'm just not sophisticated enough a man