Candide

Having called my step mom on mothers day, she called me back inviting me to the Opera. She had a spare ticket. I swung into town a little early so I could stop my my mom's house. Mom lives just down the street from step mom. I try to see them both when I come to town, efficient use of time and gas.

My mom had a gift for me a fun bracelet with the saying "It is what it is", my mantra for this portion of my life. Don't seem to have much control over the world at the moment. I just have to be patient and wait it all out. I stayed for an hour chatting before I had to scoot down the street for dinner and the Opera.

Dinner was great. A huge steak and spinach and a delightful rice dish, Ben and Jerrie's Cherries Garcia ice cream and some Dark Chocolate Almonds from Trader Joe's for dessert.  Then we were off to the Opera. I haven't been to the Opera in a long time. I really love the Symphony, but the sun has been shining, the days are long so the drive didn't bother me as it would have in the winter months, I came into town for the Opera and to hang with family.

I don't like Opera much. This was a Leonard  Bernstein produced Opera. I had high expectations of great songs and in English. There is a mini screen above the stage that prints the words so you can understand what they are saying. In a foreign opera is gives the translations. I still needed it for the English words. The plot did not catch me at all.

Candide is based of a Voltaire novel. A young illegitimate man, Candide, is kicked out of the house having fallen in love with the daughter of the house. He then has all these really depressing experiences trying to survive in the world with no money or connections anymore. He is pressed into the army that then attacks his family home. He finds every one dead upon his arrival. He takes a boat to Spain. The boat sinks and he and a friend are washed up on shore, just as a local volcano erupts.

To give the local community a lift of spirits and a happy fair, having just lost everything to the volcano, Candide and his friend are arrested as Heretics by the local inquisition. His friend is hung while Candide is flogged for the entertainment and enjoyment of the villagers.

Having survived the flogging, Candide goes to Paris after Spain, and discovers his true love is a high class prostitute now that the family home is destroyed and gone in the war. She hadn't really died in the war as he thought. She had survived her mortal wounds. She must have been just unconscious when he held her  body in his arms and sang of her death.

Candide accidentally kills her two very powerful  lovers when they arrive at her home for liaisons. One is the City Bishop and the other a Jewish banker that the church uses for their funds.  The two must run away, with her box of jewelry that she has earned. Her Madam goes with them, the woman helped Candide's lover achieve her success in Paris as a paramour. Somewhere along the way the box is stolen and they are all broke again. The Madam goes back into the  business of prostitution to raise money for them all.

They are about to head to the New World by ship for a fresh start, when intermission happens,
 and we were able to diplomatically escape with the audience. We were not the only ones that just walked right out of the Theater.

Candide was not well received when it first came out in the 50's. Nore has it had popular acclaim since then. It was part of the  Opera season this year. I enjoyed the company of my family, but I think I might stick to symphony, where I can make up my own visions of what the music tells me. This had too much rape, torture, death and prostitution, which is what many Operas portray, the pain and suffering of life. Often the women have to prostitute themselves to survive and die in the end. We didn't stick around for any more of that.

 I didn't need an Opera to tell me how little control we have on our lives anymore, how whacked the world still is.  None of the tunes really captured me. There was one aria the lead soprano had that was fun, when she sings of her bright life in Paris, before her true love finds her again and they have to flee. Otherwise there was no spark.

I was home by a decent time. Had we stayed for the second half, which was another hour and a half, I would have been really late getting home. The family was already well asleep when I snuck in, but Tom woke enough to acknowledge my safe return. Even the dog didn't bark or raise his head from the foot of the bed.