Dresden

Friday May 1st 2009:

We awoke early, packed up our stuff, and boarded a train to Dresden. We arrived early afternoon, dropped our stuff of at our hostel and then headed out to explore. Although mostly destroyed in WWII, the city is still beautifully situated along the river and has a distinct eastern European feel, and reminded me of some of the pictures of Prague I have seen. We walked through the center of town, saw the cathedral, the palace gardens and the bustling street. We then walked back to our hostel to change for the opera that evening.

However when we arrived at the opera house, our professor told us that there was a problem with our tickets. He said that they wouldn’t let him purchase group tickets ahead of time, and when he arrived to buy them at the box office, they again wouldn’t sell them to him since we weren’t all present. So he was frantically running around the square buying unwanted tickets off of people. We eventually got three standing room tickets, and four other tickets from other patrons. The three guys got the standing room since they arrived first, and we made sure Erin and Julia got in since they had never seen an opera. Jill was the next to get in since she was a voice major, and I got the last ticket that was sold to us by a lady who’s husband couldn’t attend that evening. I breathed a sigh of relief than sprinted up the stairs to my balcony seat. I love opera and was excited to see my first European production. This opera was Mozart’s “Die Entführung aus dem Serail” and basically is the story of how Belmonte tries to rescue his love Konstanze from captivity. Although it was in German, and without subtitles like most Opera’s in the US or other “higher-tech” theatres it was beautifully sung and nonetheless entertaining. I find Mozart operas to be very well written, and very entertaining. He has a gift to transport the audience member into another world with beautiful music. His vocal music has a charming quality, but is quite virtuosic-continuing to run in scale or arpeggiated patterns from the top to the bottom of a singers range. I thoroughly enjoyed the performance, but my favorite singer was Konstanze, who had a warm voice, but very extensive range effortlessly “popping” out high notes. After the opera we met up with the rest of the group, (who had instead gotten dinner) and together enjoyed a grilled kebab in a park on our way back. As we ended our night, it was strange to have to say goodbye to Professor Andy. I wouldn’t go back to the group to Strasbourg, but instead venture to Vienna. I was excited about the prospect of finishing a great semester, and of seeing Kevin and my family soon, but a part of me was already nostalgic.