Руслан и Людмила

Today I had a little adventure- I attended an opera for the first time. It was Ruslan and Lyudmila, performed at the Mariinsky Theater, the stage where it premiered. I decided to go purely out of curiosity after I saw the opera listed on the schedule of Mariinsky performances posted in the academy. About half of the third act is a scene consisting solely of ballet, and last year, I learned and performed in this excerpt from Ruslan and Lyudmila. I was interested to see what the entire show was like, and I figured that I might as well find out what it is like to see an opera while I have the opportunity.

I am pleased to be able to say that I really enjoyed the show. It was very long, lasting for four and a half hours, but I liked it enough that it didn't seem like it was nearly that long. 

The opera is in Russian and there were English supertitles on a screen placed above the stage, but I didn't look at them very much. I preferred to focus my attention on the things happening onstage rather than on reading the translation of everything that was being said. I read the synopsis of the story several times last night and reviewed it during the breaks and intermissions between the opera's five acts to remind myself of the twists and turns of the storyline, so I had a decent idea of what was going on even if I didn't understand what the singers were saying. I was content to sit, listen to their voices, and look at the costumes and sets.

I know absolutely nothing about opera and little more about singing in general, but I could tell that these singers were extremely talented. The fact that I listened to them for about four hours with no idea what was being said and actually liked the experience should be a strong testament to that; their voices were beautiful enough that just their sound was enough to make the performers interesting and engaging though each specific word had little meaning to me.

What surprised me the most about this entire experience was actually the age distribution of the show's audience members. There were so many young children, enough that I would have been surprised even if this had been a performance of the Nutcracker. I think that the best sign that the arts are alive and appreciated is when parents are taking their children to experience them, so it made me really happy to see this.