Opera, Arts, and Ice Cream

The Toronto Go Girls demonstrated this past week that they are not just a bunch of uncultured road jocks. This week, the Go Girls showed that they are endurance athletes in the truest sense of the word: on the road, at the office, and at the opera.

On Tuesday, the majority of the Go Girls attended Opera Atelier's performance of Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride (1779). This opera had a background story (you know that the opera is serious when there is a background story): father sacrifices daughter to rescue sister-in-law; mother is highly annoyed at this aggressive form of parenting and kills father; son must avenge father and so kills mother; son goes crazy with guilt; daughter, unbeknownst to all, is rescued and sent to an island where the gods dictate that she must kill every stranger who washes up on shore; and son sets out on an unfortunate voyage that results in him and his best bosom buddy washing up on the shore of his sister's death island.

The opera itself focused on the terrible premonitions that apparently everybody was having on this island, the daughter's duty to kill the strangers who are really her brother and his friend, and the bonds of friendship between the brother and his friend, who are both willing to die for each other. Of course, since no opera would be complete without some form of mistaken or secret identity, the daughter and son do not learn that they are related until it is almost too late. In short, there were many heavy ruminations on fate and the gods, discourses about guilt and cursed lives, and pledges of love and loyalty, in addition to much cleaving and heaving, dancing and prancing, and so forth.

The music was spectacular and the costumes lovely (though at times, a bit revealing). The dancing was amazing and wonderfully choreographed. In sum, Opera Atelier put on a wonderful production. However, to be truthful, there was a lot of death, heaving, and sighing to endure for a Tuesday night. Tuesdays are, as Miedema commented, "the best TV night of the week". It was occasionally challenging to sit still to watch nymph like dancers tormenting the brother, as he sang of his madness and his guilt. But the Go Girls are endurance athletes and endure they did. In the end, the runners did appreciate the artistry of the production. As Carol noted, the dancing was perfectly timed and all could agree that the music was outstanding. Alain and Carol were able to speak intelligently about the opera in the context of the period in which it was written. Miedema was able to speak appreciatively about the ice cream that she and Carol had during intermission. Well, we each bring a different strength to the table.

The Go Girls also had the opportunity to meet the lovely ladies with whom Olga recently vacationed. These ladies assured us that Olga acted with the utmost decorum while vacationing abroad. "Like a nun," they told us, "Olga was like a nun." We are not sure that the ladies had the right Olga, but we will have to trust that the three rather mischievous looking ladies did in fact conduct themselves with conduct akin to nuns.

As a final note, the Go Girls missed having Joanne and Mariana with them at the opera. However, Joanne and Mariana have assured us that they already have enough culture (or at least more than the rest of us) and therefore can afford to miss one artistic event. I suspect that both Joanne and Mariana were at home watching a special edition of Monsterpiece Theatre, but I cannot confirm this information at the present time.