La Traviata

A little while ago I had convinced Wolfram to get tickets for La Traviata, to be performed at the Esplanade theater in Singapore. This theater is famous as it looks like a durian. Now, why people would want to build a theater looking like a stinking fruit remains a mystery to me. Yet, it's the biggest theater in Singapore and hosts many concerts, operas and other shows.

We were both positively surprised by the concert hall. It looked much better than expected, and perfectly suited for an opera. On top the seats we had selected in the first balcony were pretty good, I.e. good visibility and almost in the center.

The opera itself was good, at least to the inexpert that I am. It was weird to see Asian people on the stage. I guess I'm not used to it. And to be fair given they are overall smaller people, it is quite impressive that they manage to get so much voice out of them.

What was totally disturbing was the set up and the decor. While La Traviata is a classic, the performers were wearing modern clothes and so was the decor. Having someone on stage singing about Violetta leaving in a horse carriage while playing on a laptop is disturbing. For some reason I couldn't get my mind to accept this mix between time periods.

Putting the anachronisms aside, we had a good time and the three hours passed pretty quickly. Conclusion we should do that more often.