Books and Opera

At school today I decided I would come home and blog about some things that have happened lately. But as so frequently happens, I come home, sit on the couch in front of my computer, and suddenly find more interesting things to do than blog. So before we got home, Kristin and I determined to quickly grab our computers and walk to a coffee shop to blog instead. I got excited as blogging is always so much more fun with a cup of coffee in your hand.

There is a coffee chain here called Costa Coffee and is very much like a Starbucks in some ways except that the logo is red, not green. I ordered my vanilla latte, and asked u vas internet? To which the waiter shook his head. I could hardly believe it. So excited to blog and now I can’t. It is crazy since the coffee shop is on the ground floor of a large business complex called the World Trade Center about two blocks from my flat. You would think they would have internet. So instead, I took it in stride and I am writing this in a Word document that I will copy paste into my blog when I get home. They can’t ruin my blogging mood:)

So things have been going really well lately. I have been back at school now for two weeks since Christmas break. I really love my students. My native speakers are so much fun and my other kids are great too. I have had a change in my schedule at work this week though. Each grade has two main classroom teachers and a homeroom teacher who walks them to their other classes such as art, music, computers, PE, etc and takes them to their meals and recess. Our homeroom teacher, Yelena Yurievna, was just transferred to the third grade class because their homeroom teacher is now on maternity leave. So I am now the full-time homeroom teacher who also teaches as well. Let’s just say that my schedule has gotten significantly more hectic. I think it will make this semester go by extremely fast though. And there are benefits as it allows me to be with the kids more and get to know them a lot better outside of class time.

This past Wednesday I took the day off from school. The reason is that I had bought tickets to see an opera at the Bolshoi Theatre. The opera was to start right at 7pm, and I knew that if there was bad traffic, I would never make it to the theatre on time. So I took the day off and what I great day it was!

The opera I was going to see is Tchaikovsky’s Evgeny Onegin based off the book, Evgeny Onegin by Russia’s favorite author, Alexander Pushkin. I had been introduced to this book in Russian literature class at Whitworth. Unfortunately, our syllabus was so packed with other reading that we didn’t read the book, but Leonard had us see the movie instead. The movie was great and it inspired me to read the book later outside of class. I am picky about my translators, so I waited till I found a copy with a good translation. I found a collector’s edition on Amazon.com that gave the book in English, the book in Russian, and two commentaries by the translator, Vladimir Nabokov. I fell in love with the story, and would say that it is still my favorite book of all time. I have read it multiple times, I own the movie, I own the Russian book on CD, and I have some of the music from the opera. So as you can imagine, I was stoked when I saw decently priced tickets to see it at the Bolshoi.



I went with Daniel, one of the teachers I work with, and he is in love with opera. We went to dinner first and then walked to the Bolshoi. It was an incredibly cold night and as we walked, all I could think about was how my legs were burning with the cold. But finally we arrived. It is beautiful inside. The theater it was playing in was the small theatre. There are two stages in the Bolshoi, but the large one is undergoing reconstruction. It was built in 1776 and had not been renovated in well over 100 years. They found that the foundational structure was dilapidated and so it has been undergoing construction for quite some time. As a result, all performances are in the small theatre.









Our seats were in a perfect spot. There are two balconies and our seats were on the first balcony, in the first row at center stage. We could see and hear everything great. The book is written in 8 parts. The opera combines the first two parts, so there are 7 parts to the opera, each one being about 7-15 minutes long.





The music was beautiful and the singing was great. I will admit however, that I was a bit disappointed in some of the acting and in the script. The script was significantly different from the book at certain parts and really changed the mood, character development, and meaning of some events. When the opera came out, it was greeted with raving reviews by foreigners, but a lot of mixed reviews by Russians. I certainly understand why. The chance to be at the Bolshoi was a great thing though, and even if I had known beforehand that I’d be a bit disappointed, I still would have gone to see it. Yesterday though, I spent the evening reading through parts of the book again and watching the movie to reaffirm my love of the story. I highly recommend that you read the book. But read a good translation though…Barnes and Noble Classics do not count as good translations. Vladimir Nabokov is the best.

Well, that is about all I have to say on that subject. But continuing on the subject of books, I am reading James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl. Can you believe that I’ve never read this before?! How is this possible? Every child in elementary school reads this and loves it. I found it in the library at school and decided to read it to my native speakers in 3rd grade. I am reading it through ahead of time and it is fantastic. I could hardly put it down today.
I love reading. Thank you so much Daddy for passing on your love of books to me and for pushing me to read good literature and not just “fluff” books all the time:)