Day 090: A nice Sunday
36yearsago.com
Vienna 1971—A Student Journal
A year of music, study, travel, sightseeing &
friends.
Day 90
— A nice Sunday
31-October-1971
(Sun.)
TRANSCRIPT
I love to walk around on Sundays. Other people are
always walking and it makes me feel good to see kids
playing and people enjoying themselves.
Went to Vienna Boys' Choir mass in Morning and the
opera at night.
Madame Butterfly. Pucinni writes very
beautiful music.
REFLECTIONS
Sunday.
Another
Sunday brings a Vienna Boys’ Choir mass, walking in
the parks, and people watching. A needed break from
the studying and practicing of the week.
Pucinni
and opera.
Giacomo Puccini
(1858–1924)
was an Italian operatic composer, most noted for
his operas,
Manon Lescaut,
Madame Butterfly, Tosca, La Bohéme,
and
others.
These
operas are part of the standard repertoire of the
world-class opera houses. You know that
La Bohéme is one of
my favorites with
Madame Butterfly up there
as well. It’s not that I listen to opera everyday,
but I enjoy seeing opera, live.
Madame
Butterfly. The first
performance of
Madame
Butterfly was met
with hostility. Though, it is suspected that his
rivals engineered that event. It quickly became
popular and is successful today. The opera is
about a young Geisha, Butterfly, who marries a
U.S. Navy sailor that is in port. The cad’s name
is Pinkerton. Yes, he leaves her for several
years, marries an American girl, then comes back
to ask for his child. All this time, Butterfly is
hopeful about their love, refusing other suitors.
When she learns the truth, she commits suicide.
Ah, opera—the music can often be beautiful but the
plot can be grim.
Opera is actually the "soaps" of the 17th–19th
centuries. For non-Americans, soaps are the
soap-opera television shows on daytime TV. No singing
and music, but plenty of corny plots.
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John
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