In the past few days we saw a lot of the city, we got a lot of the cultural experience of Prague! Every night we went to a performance, of which there are always so many, and so many of such good quality, VERY inexpensively!
Tuesday we saw the opera Don Carlos at the State Opera House (for 50 Kc!). It was the first time I had ever seen an opera, and I really enjoyed it, even though it was sung in Italian with Czech overtitles, which meant I couldn't understand it at all! (Understanding "si" and "ascolta!" doesn't count as following the Italian!) :) The music was beautiful, and the theater was amazing- it kind of reminded me of the Semperoper, but I think I liked this one better. We had really good seats- 5th row or so, and could see everything on stage so well! I think when I get back to a country where I speak the language I'm going to buy a copy of this opera (with the lyrics written out in the little booklet) so I can understand what happened!
On Wednesday we went to a classical concert in a baroque church just on the east side of the Charles Bridge. We had reserved seats in the pews and listened to an organ, violin and flute from a balcony between us and the altar. The music was beautiful and I pulled out my baby charette to capture the back wall behind the altar. I felt like I could have stayed there forever- there is such an overpowering feeling I get when I listen to music like that, especially in that setting- I feel so much a part of the whole experience, as though it swallows me entirely!
On Thursday we decided to see a marionette theater, since apparently they are famous in Prague. (I didn't know that, but they were for sale in virtually every store, and there were advertisements everywhere for performances.) We found one on Karlova- Orpheus. This could be pretty good, we thought, a marionette interpretation of a Greek myth? We started to wonder, though, when there were only 6 of us waiting at the door at performance time. A man came and opened the door and led us up a narrow stairway above the Greek restaurant we had just eaten dinner at, and into what looked like an attic with bleacher seats. In front of us was the marionette stage, with its little red curtains and a little vorstage of 3 planes (plywood?) propped up against each other like presentation boards for a science fair project. It didn't look professional at all, and I was hoping that nothing would be happening in this little vorstage, because we'd be able to see the puppetteer because of how the seating was arranged.
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