01.24.2012 Die Zauberflöte/The Magic Flute

My first opera! This was totally unplanned for. The opportunity sprung itself at the end of the day when my coworker got a message from her flat-mate about going to see The Magic Flute. My coworker has been trying to get us to meet and befriend each other because we are both sort of on our own in the city, so she asked if I wanted to go, and since I had no plans (other than eating), I said sure, why not! 

Theatre hall

The Deutches Oper is an old minimal building. Lots of large rectangular open spaces. Nothing too fancy, but still quite nice. 

  

1. The garterobe,                                                        2. theatre hall 

Mezzanine, gift shop lounge

via deutsche oper berlin.

The Magic Flute, is probably one of Mozart's most played works. We saw it in its original language (German), of course. So neither my new friend nor I could understand a word of what was happening, even with the captions above. Luckily I skim read the wiki before heading out haha. Or we would be totally confused. Also, the costumes were super modern-minimal. Everyone was in white, and there was a dramatic use of lighting and shadows, and lots of black which was unfortunate because I expecting something colourful like a European version of Japanese Kabuki. 

lobby

My new friend is a pilot, who flies extensively. She lives in Berlin for about ten days a month, and not all at once. All the other times, she is working and living in Paris. I asked her why she wanted to come to Berlin, and she just shrugged, she doesn't know the language here, or have any friends, but I guess she just wanted to try living in a different country for a while for a change. But even though she is here for short snippets of time, we've planned our next opera date. We're going to watch Bizet's Carmen!