The Austin Lyric Opera gave an awesome performance of La Traviata last night which, after a great dinner at Taverna, I had the chance to see. I love opera but I have a bone to pick with whoever it is that's choosing these supertitles: can we please...please...pay someone to do better, more compelling translations of these works. I understand there's a whole "fidelity to the text of the original" thing you've got to deal with but, for the love of god, there is no reason to use the word "succour" when you could just say "help." And don't give me the crap argument that we should expect higher standards from an audience because we're talking about an opera audience. I saw Baz Luhrmann's New York production of La bohème a few years ago and that dude made a concerted effort to make the supertitles something that his audience could relate to. I hate the fact that there is this weird, literary veil between the words and the people reading them and there is absolutely no reason that somebody can't just go in and update those things.
Anyway. It was performed at the Long Center on the riverfront here in Austin and, having never been to that hall before, it was damn beautiful.
I love when architects do stuff like this. It's just your regular shoebox design but they put this gorgeous halo around one facade of the building that really adds something to the aesthetics of attending a concert there. And the interior is just as beautiful. This, however, could not be said for the Austin Music Hall. I went there to see Jónsi last week and, as cool as the building looks from the outside...
...it's nothing but your run-of-the-mill, dirty-ass club with plywood bars on the inside. Despite that fact, it was an incredible show. It was almost six months to the day that I saw him in Minneapolis at The Pantages and that live show is still powerful enough to reduce me to a tearful, hot mess (what can I say...I cry easily...it's the one thing I have in common with John Boehner). They had to alter parts of the production to adapt to what I assume is a more restrictive venue than the theater in Minneapolis and so the backdrop that everything was projected onto never dropped to reveal the burnt down wall behind it. Here, compare:
Minneapolis show last April
Austin
Either way it was totally incredible and I fully intend on buying the go live DVD when it comes out next month.
I know this is totally cliche but I really feel like this is one of those albums that has embedded itself into every part of what my conception is of myself. It feels incredibly autobiographical for some reason and the ecstasy in the music is something I've been trying to capture and put into my own. I feel unbelievably grateful that I got to see Jónsi twice during his tour of the US and I cannot wait for either his next album or when Sigur Rós puts another one out.
Mahalo.
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