The Opera

Last night I attended the opera in Salt Lake City. It was Giacomo Puccini's La Boheme, who also wrote Madama Butterfly and Turandot It is playing at the Capital Theater through the 24th of this month. It was my first real opera and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was very impressed with the theater, and the performers were absolutely incredible! La Boheme is a 19th century "realistic opera" which was new in its time by showing realistic stories instead of unrealistic fantasy plots which were done up to that time. The opera is sang in Italian but they did have a little English translation monitor thing hanging from the upper deck section which I didn't even notice until half way through the first scene, haha. Anyways, there were a lot of cool things about it that I won't bore you with, but it was a lot of fun.

A New Passion/Appreciation... Music

Right now I am doing some homework while listening to Hector Berlioz's "Symphonie Phantastique" a timeless piece from the Romantic era of music and perhaps the first complete program symphony. Thanks to my Intro to Music class and really cool professor, Mark Ammons, channels such as classical symphony, romantic period opera, and romantic symphony have found their way on to my pandora radio list. Classical 89.5 FM is now my #2 radio button in my car. What I thought was going to be a dud of a class has turned out to be one of the funnest courses I've taken here at BYU. One of the reasons I enjoy the class so much is that it is almost like a European history class. Learning about all these different composers and the circumstances and times they lived in has been truly fascinating.