The Elixir of Love

This is the interior of the Vienna State Opera.

We were sitting approximately on the extreme upper left edge of this picture.

We saw The Elixir of Love. I've only been to two operas, both with this theme:

Beautiful girl is pursued by two guys. One guy is rich / important, but a prick. The other guy is poor but with a heart of gold, and really loves the girl.

Girl chooses:

THE PRICK.

But then she is overwhelmed by the untiring faithfulness and devotion of the poor guy, it turns her heart around, etc. She ends up with the poor guy, and is happy.

B and her parents have season tickets to the opera. They have for years. This may be coming to an end, though, so this may have been our last opera together. In October when I was here and saw my first opera, I noticed the little ritual the season ticket holders have---they say hello, some catch up on what's been happening since last time, etc.

There were ladies from B's old neighborhood sitting nearby. One came up and greeted us and said she was glad to meet me---B says her dad has been telling everyone in the neighborhood about me. At the intermission, we chatted with these ladies in the coat room---each has her favorite opera-writing guy (Wagner, Puccini, or whoever) and they debated whether past performances of this or that opera were good or great or shit.

I was really impressed with the set construction. It actually looked like the courtyard of an Italian village on a bright sunny day. The illusion was very nicely carried out.

The traveling snake-oil selling doctor was played by a Korean opera guy. I thought he had a very fine voice but B said he didn't project enough; the orchestra walked on him a bit. I also noticed some Asian guys playing Italian soldiers. This is part of the fun of it for me: Asian Italians, and a snake-oil wagon pulled by men instead of horses. You just let these things go and enjoy the show.

The two operas I've seen can't be called seamless in the plot department. This one had some holes you could slide a supertanker through---sideways. Like: The poor guy joins the army to make money to buy the elixir of love, which is really just wine the snake-oil doctor peddles. Which means he has to ship out and can't be with the woman he wants in any case. But wait! Unbeknownst to him, his rich uncle just died, leaving him a fortune...

If the guy knew he had a rich uncle, why couldn't he just borrow a few lira from him, instead of signing himself away to the army for elixir money? But as B says, in opera the plot, such as it may be, exists only to move the music along.

I was worried all day about having a coughing spasm at the opera, or fainting from weakness, or some other side effect of the flu, but everything worked out.

However, when the second act started, the lady sitting next to me had a really bad coughing spell. She couldn't stop. B finally pulled some cough drops out of her purse and slipped them to the lady. Problem solved. Vicks 44, with honey.

Got home about 11:30 and had my first wine since last week. A sure sign I'm on the mend.