STL DPB ON THE ROAD - THE OPERA TOUR

Prague

Vienna

Budapest

We are opera fans and this trip was planned, in part, as an opera tour. The 19th Century houses were quite small by the standards of the big venues we've visited in the U.S., like New York, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles, or European houses like the London Coliseum, Paris' Opera Bastille or the Netherlands Opera in Amsterdam. There were hits and misses at each of the three cities we visited.

Prague: we heard Shostakovitch's lurid, violent Lady Macbeth of Mtensk. I love the music and the cast was flawless. We had what we thought were the best seats in the house, first balcony, first row, center. There was about enough legroom for a modern eight year old, and it was painful for 6 ft. 3 inch / 196 cm me. The show wasn't sold out so we found some seats at intermission a few rows back that worked out.

Vienna: this was like a visit to the temple for me, the Wiener Staatsoper where Gustav Mahler was conductor for 10 years. You might tell from the photo that we were in a second-tier box. Never been in a box in all the opera houses we've visited. We were in the second of three rows. My advice: NEVER buy tickets in a box unless you can get first row. There was a was a quite large person in front of me who blocked my view of a third of the stage. The production of Carmen was a disappointment, with particularly minimalist staging and not that great principals.

Budapest: I thought this would be the highlight, a 100th anniversary of Zoltan Kodaly's Hungarian singspeil Hary Janos. It may have had much cultural significance but the very long musical introduction was not that interesting. There were long stretches of dialog, with English surtitles so small and quickly moving that we couldn't follow them. And then again the seats were fit for a eight year old. We left at intermission.

But then we'll be hearing Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera in January, and at least we know what we're in for.                

 
 

STL DPB IN THE AIR - GREENLAND

 

Our flight from London to St. Louis has gone way up north, passing over the southern tip of Greenland. Just an iPhone shot, but what a gift.                      

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - ALMOST HOME

 

Good morning from soggy Heathrow Airport. We are not going where this plane is going. We flew in from Budapest yesterday afternoon. It was worth it to spend a night at an airport hotel so we could get British Airway's four-day-a-week non-stop flight to St. Louis. (No more changing in Chicago!)

Home tonight. There is Starlink WiFi on the plane so maybe I'll get some more editing done.                

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - BUDAPEST METRO

 

From Berlin to Buenos Aires, we pride ourselves in taking public transit wherever we travel. It is becoming more difficult with my spine issues and need of a cane, and we increasingly use taxis, However, we hired a private guide on Sunday and took several trips on the Budapest Metro. Public transit here is free for 65 and older. The stations, trains and cars are tiny by New York/London/Paris standards but they are impeccably clean, run frequently and get you where you want to go.              

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - ST. MATTHIAS AND ST. STEPHEN

 

We visited the two major cathedrals of Budapest today, St. Matthias and St. Stephen.  I didn't know anything about the former. He was chosen by the other eleven apostles to replace Judas Iscariot. There are a couple of St. Stephens around but this one became the first king of Hungary in about 1000 CE.

The first photo is an amazing window in Matthias, The second is a wide view of the transept of Stephen. But while editing it there was something I couldn't get out of my head, https://tinyurl.com/ykjpasa2 .               

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - LEAVING VIENNA

 

We left Vienna on Friday morning on one of the perpetually late trains in this part of the world, arriving in Budapest late afternoon. Beautiful day in another beautiful city. It seems as if we are going down a stream from one linguistic island to another, Czech  to German to Hungarian. I learned some beer-related and courtesy words in Czech. We know a little German from school and several visits. Hungarian is a complete mystery. The roots of the language are thought to be from western Siberia and the only related European language is Finnish.

However, the stream we are floating in is English. It's everywhere and we rarely have difficulty communicating. It is the world's second language and, happily, our first.            

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - SIGMUND FREUD'S WAITING ROOM

 

Sigmund Freud and family occupied spacious apartments a short distance from our hotel. They are now a museum dedicated to his life and work, with emphasis on the harrowing misfortunes he and his family suffered at the hands of the Nazis after the Anschluss. There were some artifacts and photographs and an awful lot of documents written in German. Every section had many text boards written in German and English. It was fascinating but got to be more than our eyes and brains could manage. 

Only one room was re-created to look as it did a century ago. This is the waiting room he shared with his sister Anna, also a psychoanalyst. The consultation room is deliberately left bare but for a few old photos. The famous couch and other furnishings were moved to London when Freud fled Austria.