Lucia was pretty good, if not as blood-and-guts and horribly violent as I like my operas to be (the BGF thinks this is a worrying trait of mine, but I reckon that so long as my bloodlust is limited to opera, the world is safe). The Gaeity was a nice venue for it too and it made an interesting change to be there sober, attending a performance, rather than tipsy and making a performance of my own on a Saturday night (it doubles as a nightclub on weekends). The only bum notes for me were Lucia's jowly expressions (imagine a pissed off bulldog in a wedding gown) and the gentlemen's glued-on facial hair (you knew who the villain was, as his moustache had twirly bits).
The volunteering that earned us our €65 seats turned out to be good fun in the end. I love chatting up strangers so I was always going to enjoy it, but even the BGF was smiling at people. We were surveying their opinions on the festival, and they were only too happy to oblige us. One guy had already been surveyed and subsequently approached by two more of the volunteers (a loner and therefore a prime target) but he liked the look of me, so decided to do it again, and made up some different answers. Another guy seemed to have been passed over by the rest of em but looked game, so I said hey ho, we'll give him a go. He was 73 (he told me) but looked about a million, had no front teeth, and was about 5'4. A Wexford man, living in Dublin for 40 years now, with the maddest fucking accent you've ever heard. A friend at home had told him that there was a festival on ("I thought he was taking the piss out of me, to be honest, but there was, and here I am" says he, dribbling Maxi Twist ice cream down his tweed jacket) and this was his second time in the one week to see Lucia. I asked him what others he'd like to see performed in the future, so he gave me a blow-by-blow account of Bellini's Il Pirata and some other one which translated as The Brigand, as well as intimate personal histories of the late greats who'd performed them. If Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh did opera...
The volunteering that earned us our €65 seats turned out to be good fun in the end. I love chatting up strangers so I was always going to enjoy it, but even the BGF was smiling at people. We were surveying their opinions on the festival, and they were only too happy to oblige us. One guy had already been surveyed and subsequently approached by two more of the volunteers (a loner and therefore a prime target) but he liked the look of me, so decided to do it again, and made up some different answers. Another guy seemed to have been passed over by the rest of em but looked game, so I said hey ho, we'll give him a go. He was 73 (he told me) but looked about a million, had no front teeth, and was about 5'4. A Wexford man, living in Dublin for 40 years now, with the maddest fucking accent you've ever heard. A friend at home had told him that there was a festival on ("I thought he was taking the piss out of me, to be honest, but there was, and here I am" says he, dribbling Maxi Twist ice cream down his tweed jacket) and this was his second time in the one week to see Lucia. I asked him what others he'd like to see performed in the future, so he gave me a blow-by-blow account of Bellini's Il Pirata and some other one which translated as The Brigand, as well as intimate personal histories of the late greats who'd performed them. If Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh did opera...
