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La Boheme at Hamburg. Romania conquers Hanseatic League! [ Author Michael Daniel Watson ] [ From category THE Articles ] [ Subcategory OperaRail 2015 ] [ Subcategory II Teodor Ilincăi ] [ Translator Catalina Popescu ] [ Article date: 2015-05-09 ] [ From city Hamburg ] [ Country Germania ]   The biggest city in Northern Germany, of 1.8 million inhabitants, the second biggest in the entire Germany, after the capital Berlin. But the suburbs are much larger, of approximately 5 million inhabitants. Leader of the Hanseatic League, which was first of all a commercial alliance between the Germany’s northern cities. Esthetically, I only enjoyed Rathaus, the City Hall, which looks great. Besides it, large and crowded buildings – I mean the city center – which, together with the weather, gives the city a general gloomy appearance. It rains often, now it hailed too, although it was the 1st of March, and, if I think of it, I realize I didn’t see much sun in this city, even if I was here in the summer too. The Opera building is no exception, with its... hospital-like look. The interior, of course, is modern, and to me interesting are the shapes of the balconies, slightly rounded, facing the scene and grouped, looking a little like some wooden cable cars. Begginen wir gleich! Incominciamo! It is given an array with 3 rows and 3 columns, numbered starting from 1. Fill the array’s elements with the details corresponding to the chosen theme. Solution in the C++ language: for (i=1; i<=3; i++) for (j=1; j<=3; j++) fill (a[i][j]) ; Or, for those who prefer the Turbo Pascal language: For i:=1 to 3 do For j:=1 to 3 do fill (a[i, j]) ; Similar is in Java, Javascript, Visual Basic, C# or other computer programming languages, but the logic is the same, so I shouldn’t give further details, should I? Of course, i represents the level, not the floor, and j is the room number from that level. a[1][1]. That means level 1, room 1. The walls are cream-colored, and this is the default value, implicit, if it is not given. Somewhere, in a corner, a Christmas tree. a[1][2]= brown walls, a desk in the middle. a[1][3]. A man half turned towards the audience is watching TV, but the TV is facing the opposite direction. a[2][1], we go to level 2, that is the first floor. Walls more yellowish. a[2][2]= the center of the matrix, the main room. A single bed in the middle, a small drawing like a child picture on the back wall, mostly in white and green, a heater painted in dark red to the left, a small round metal stove to the right. The walls mostly red-garnet-bluish, unevenly painted, with spots, as if there lived a painter. a[2][3]. An old man and an old woman in home clothes sit at a table in a decor reminding of the Romanian communist apartments, the table, chairs, and bookcase of brown varnished-like wood. a[3][1]. A mirror. A bed. An old woman walks in the door, spruces up, combs her hair in front of the mirror, and then leaves. a[3][2]. White walls with delicate lightly distributed patterns. On the bed sits a madam reading something. a[3][3]. A TV in the left corner and a guy watching it, sitting with his back turned a little towards the audience. In the meantime, the man has fallen asleep. He was probably watching politics or Romanian football. :-) The requirement: To calculate the determinant of the array :-) and to identify the inhabitants of rooms a[2][2], a[2][3] and a[3][2]! Rudolfo (Teodor Ilincai) is wearing dark grey cloth trousers, grey shirt and black quilted jacket. The others are dressed in the same style, peculiar being only Shaunard, with light grey checked trousers, light purple shirt, cream-colored overcoat and disheveled hair, dyed dark blond. The jokes that they throw at each other are a bit aggressive – something like the army ones – but not too much. The Romanian Rodolpho’s novel ;-) is hot, "Era con bací! " (“It was with kisses! ”), Collide is pretending ironically to want to kiss Marcelo, who is avoiding him. Then the two of them grab Rudolfo and throw him “revengefully” on the bed. The woman from the third floor hears noises, puts the book aside and... eavesdrops. :-) Any answers to the above mentioned requirement? :-) Eine wort, una parola, one word: "Mieto! " "Affito! " "Chiria! " The old man got up from the table and came in the room of the other four for “a word”. While he is invited by the bohemians to have a drink, Shaunard goes in the room downstairs and brings Ms Alcindoro to hear what he is saying. She remains at the door and listens, the old man perorates how "vecchio, ma robusto" he is, and the end, "mia moglia", happens exactly when Mr Alcindoro sees Ms Alcindoro. She pulls his ear, then goes pell-mell to the room a[2][3] :-), packs and leaves. He comes, finds his room empty, and switches the light off, then leaves angrily, too. Hey, but there really lives a painter! a[2][2] is the room of Marcello and his three friends, TeoRudolfo, Colline si Shaunard! :-) Klopf! Klopf! Klopf! - Cioc! Cioc! Cioc! "Eine Frau! " - "Una donna! " The array is starting to decrement! I mean the entire building, the whole bock of rooms, is starting to go down! The first rooms disappear under the scene level, Rudolpho’s room being now at its rim. The proverbial German symmetry is altered, as the array is not square anymore. :-) Rudolfo is a little impassive, and Mimi is slightly changed, too, in comparison to the original behaviour imagined by the author. When Teo goes out on the block’s hall to look for help – hall which is visible when any of the rooms’ door is open -, Mimi looks up and watches him, then quickly rests his head on the bed again, continuing to pretend being unconscious. Teo doesn’t give up either and steals Mimi’s key, slickly spinning it on his finger. But Teo’s interpretation is classical and very intense. "Che gelida manina, se la lasci riscaldar" The second act, "sumoM efaC". Alias "Cafe Momus" in Hamburg, this is how it was written, backwards, the back side towards the audience, so that it could be read properly only from the scene. This would mean that we were in the Cafe and the artists outside, at the entrance, but I didn’t see any waitresses among the spectators. :-) But more weird, not to say stupid, seemed to me the cafe’s interior, a sculpted bust from the shoulders up, composed of a biiig head of an ugly old man who was wearing, in addition, a red and yellow bandana!! And the statue’s mouth opens and from it comes up a Santa Claus who invites people to buy toys from Parpignol... Moreover, around the statue there were clowns and some gift boxes. Besides this, the decor was appropriate. Around the statue there was the bar, circular-shaped, occupying almost the entire scene. (Requirement: To calculate its radius! :-) ) And in front of it, some tables and high, bar chairs. (Round, too, so, to work! Pi r squared is a circle area, 2 pi r is its circumference! :-) ) Mimi’s little hat, "cufietta", is "Häubchen", so it is translated differently than in Frankfurt, where it is called "Mütze". And it is pink, as it should. Marcello is in light blue jeans and brown parka. Musette, peroxide blonde with Mireille Mathieu hairdo, long dark red shining coat, white boots, looong and shining also – long legs, of course ;-) – black girdles and deep red lips. But I think we could summarize it better by saying she is extreeemly sexi B-), maybe the sexiest of the 22 Musettes I have seen. ;-) I am curious if she is musically gifted, too, or she got the role by bribing somebody, but she sweetly reproves me :-) "Quaaaaaan-do men vooo" I am sorry, I was stunned and I didn’t pay attention to the German translation! :-) Musette climbs on the counter and, while she is singing, she starts a striptease act. She gets off her red coat and remains in a white jacket, also shining, which she throws away, too. Her black girdles can be well seen as well as... the nearby region, better and more interestingly said. B-) Then, imagine that her peroxide bond hair was a wig, which she throws away and reveals her natural hair, brown and curly, which she shakes to arrange, and now she seems sexier than before. Especially because she ostentatiously raises her derriere and slaps it a little mmmmmmm :-) ) ) (Add to the uttering a white stallion neighing, on its hind legs. Ihaaa :-) ) ) ) She jumps off the bar - and "sprains" her leg. "Qual dolore! Qual bruciore! " Musette’s old man is young. :-) He has dark-red trousers, deep-red wide-brimmed hat, and looks Mexican. He is obedient, fearful (when Marcello comes threateningly towards him), fawning (towards her), humble-happy (when she contemptuously throws him her boots), gets upset, but only when Musette and Marcello kiss passionately behind him, but even then he doesn’t do anything and just leaves the scene. Behind the audience, in the corner, the door opened. It wasn’t somebody who had got there late, but you could hear the fanfare. After, it was from there, too, that the parade entered the hall, for the delight of the spectators from that wing. Or, if they didn’t like it, for my envy, for I was in the other side of the hall, and I enjoy those parts of a show that take place in the audience. "Keine Music. Kein Lärm. Keine Bohème." - "No music. No noise. No Boema." This was written with light on the curtain before the third act. The curtain rises and to the left the inn can be seen: a huge corrugated iron thing, occupying more than half a scene, looking like a ceiling tall shack. In the middle there is a door, in front of which there is a terrace with a phosphorescent red hard pierced by an arrow drawn over it, and when the door opens, from inside shines an intense red light. To the right of the scene, alone, there is a little crouched and ugly snowman. “The girls” go out of the inn to a cigarette. Short skirts, girdles, pink jackets, high heels, strident lipstick – all the elements of their job description. :-) But now comes... the bomb: “the pure ones” meet at Saint Michel and have eggs and butter in their basket. :-) ) ) In the aria there are also a cop and a black guy selling ice. Then all of them leave, except Marcello, Mimi and Rudolfo, who have come in the meantime. "Mimi e una civetta! " - "Mimi ist eine Flittchen! " "Ich liebe Mimi uber alles! " "Aber ich habe Angst." "Mimi ist sehr krank." "Mein Zimmer ist kalt." "Adio, Liebesträume! " "Im winter allein sein." "Leb wohl ohne Bitterkeit! " "Mimi is a wanton! " "I love Mimi more than anything! " "But I am afraid." "Mimi is very sick." "My room is cold." "Farewell, dreams of love! " "In the winter we are alone." "Let’s part without bitter thoughts! " Musette, in leopard costume, sexy image completed by her red boots, goes out to a cigarette with “the girls”. They mock Marcello when he quarrels with "Zauberina", his witch, and he grabs some snow, makes snowballs and scares them away with them. There remain Mimi and Rudolfo. The sublime farewell aria is here beautifully completed by the way it is directed. The block of rooms from the first act is starting to rise slowly. When it reaches the room level, Rudolfo steps inside. The house continues to rise, now carrying him, too, while Mimi remains down, walking towards the exit. The last act’s scenery has already come – how beautiful it sounds! - but, unlike the first act, everything is depressing. Almost all the rooms lack furniture, the paintings on the walls only left a mark reminding of where they had been, the wall between the room of the four and the landlord’s old room is cracked, and at the back the block staircase has its railing fallen. To increase this feeling of decay, Marcello and Rudolfo have received some dialogues in the dark and the staircase, visible through the open doors, is lighted. Only when the two start their nice duet ("O Mimi tu piu non torni"), the light shines over them. Mimi is in a long decent dress, and even sexy Musette is still sexy, but in a decent way, in a long, dark-green coat, green boots covering only her calves, and under the coat she has a black dress over a white blouse. Mimi doesn’t sit on the bed, at first she walks through the room, a little too much for a dying person, and latter she gets up and walks around again, greeting those present. "Meine schöne Mimi! " "Meine Häubchen! " "Sie nennen mich Mimi! " – They call me Mimi! "Es geht mir gut! " – I am fine! "Heilige Jungfrau" – Saint Virgin "Sei gefasst! " – Be brave! Everybody gets out of the room. Some of them reappear looking depressed, leaning against the wall, in other rooms of the block. Shaunard in Mimi’s room, where he picks up her shoes and throws them in the supermarket trolley, then he looks sadly into the distance. After the show, I waited for Teodor Ilincai at the actors’ exit, together with other Romanians that I had met on the internet. While we were gossiping a little about the show – how Mimi and the others had been – Mimi herself passed by, followed a little later by Colline and Teo. We continued to make comments, but luckily we didn’t say who knows what things, red-garnet-bluishly colored :-), because Teo spoke to Mimi and Colline... in Romanian! Tatiana Lisnic and Alin Anca formed, together with Teodor Ilincai, a true Romanian company! To me, the incident looked very much like München "Boema" ("Boema", too! ) in July 2012, when I had gone to see Angela Gheorghiu and with her I discovered other three Romanians in leading roles Laura Tatulescu in Musette, Levente Molnar in Marcello and Dan Ettinger as conductor. What a wonderful Romanian distribution this would be, Munchen 2012 + Hamburg 2015! And it really is possible! But unfortunately, it is possible in other countries than Romania. I had seen Teodor Ilincai in Craiova and Bucharest and it was a real pleasure for me to see him again in Hamburg. I don’t know how it comes, but Teo always makes me travel, although I saw him most times in Bucharest. In 2013 I returned earlier from Budapest to Bucharest specially to see him, at Craiova, of course - only last year I was in town when he came. I told him that I knew he doesn’t earn in Romania the same money as in Hamburg, but I asked him not to “forget” to sing at home, too, like others. Fortunately, it was no need to tell him that, he told me that he intended to sing in Romania, anyway, even if the money is less than in the West. And, to his credit, he really keeps his word - these days I read a piece of news saying that he would sing in his birth county, Suceava.

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30-09-2024: Aida storica 1913
"Aida" in Verona 100 + 1. A hundred emotions plus one, yours!

Arena di Verona, the most Italian place on Earth!

These are the slogans through which Arena di Verona has chosen this year, 2024, to promote the Opera Festiva
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[ Author Michael Daniel Watson ]
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The Arena di Verona is also presenting a modern version of Aida, in addition to the old but wonderful version from 1913. And it looks something like this!

The stage is tilted, and the floor is made of glass. In the center, a giant hand
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[ Author Michael Daniel Watson ]
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[ Author Michael Daniel Watson ]
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01-09-2024: “La boheme” at Arena di Verona
Arena di Verona. We arrive. We park. We get off. We take a few pictures with the Arena in the background, then ... a heavy rain starts! We take shelter under a tree. :-) I don`t think the show is happening anymore, but we can`t leave either, so we ju
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[ Author Michael Daniel Watson ]
From category THE Articles

20-12-2023: Spoletta, symbol of Hungarian anti-communist resistance
Budapest Opera House was inaugurated in 1884 to be a competition for Vienna StaatsOper. It is localised in the center of the hungarian capital, just a few minutes behind St. Stefan cathedral, the bigest church of the city. In 2022 is was open again a
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