I can now add to my list of cultural pursuits that of rock climbing. Well, depends, is it really rock climbing if you don't climb anywhere?
My good friend, Dave, invited me along to go rock climbing at Kangaroo Point in Brisbane. The idea is that by sticking fingers and toes on small ledges (approximately 2 millimetres at their widest point) you can haul yourself up a cliff face.
I never got off the ground. However, I think I can see the attraction, and I'm keen to try indoor climbing or something with bigger ledges (perhaps 4 millimetre ones!) and see what happens.
If nothing else, it would give me awesome grip . . .
G'day everyone,
I'm writing this from sunny (and stinking hot) Brisbane. I'm up visiting my mum for one last time before she and my brothers head off to America. (My Dad and my youngest brother, Daniel, headed over in November.)
I hope you all had a good Christmas. We drove up from Sydney to Brisbane on Christmas Eve (had a very good run, apart from a detour through Newcastle which added 45 minutes and a marital fight on to the trip).
Christmas presents . . . my wife gave me movie tickets (because I haven't got out to the movies so much nowadays) and a copy of JFK on DVD. My family gave me a Borders gift voucher. And my in-laws followed up the Confederate Flag they gave me for my birthday by giving me a pocket watch with a picture of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E Lee on the inside. So, all in all, quite a good birthday.
Now, I never quite finished off the Adelaide story, did I? It's kind of stale news now, so the bullet points are:
- The Cricket. This was my first live game of cricket, watched in 35 degree heat, sitting on the grass in the sun. It was day 3 of a test match between Australia and New Zealand. Live cricket is an interesting experience. Thousands of people all talking, laughing, eating food, hitting each other with clapsticks and somewhere in the distance, a bunch of guys will be playing cricket.
Siegfried - The third Ring Opera is the one that is the killer to sit through, because it's long, has a lot of tenor and has the most draggy moments. But by this time, the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra was getting into it, so they were really starting to churn away. The original guy who was going to sing Siegfried had done some damage to his vocal chords so he was replaced by a stand-in guy. He drank from a bottle of water every 20 minutes (though he was pretty good at making it part of his act) and managed to pull off a halfway decent job.
Barossa Valley - This was a total tourist trap designed to make us spend our money. Which we did.
National Treasure - see Matts Arts page.
Gotterdammerung - The final Ring opera is probably the best of the lot, especially the last half hour. Everybody just floated out of the theatre. Awesome, awesome stuff.
And that was Adelaide. Talk to you soon!
My brother Josh (14) had a motorbike accident last night. His motorbike was going about 70Km per hour when he ran into a pet sheep on the way home. (the sheep is fine) but my brother came out looking rather beaten up. They were concerned about neck/spinal injuries and he needed to be seen to by a doctor so the Royal Flying Doctor Service came out and flew him and my mother to Adelaide (that's where Matt & I went for our holiday) It is a LONG way from where they live but it's where they RFDS flies patients. The doctors and nurses worked on him until 2:30am last night, xraying him, bandaging him up etc etc. He is resting in Hospital now and I hope Mum can find a place to rest. She has no bed etc obviously so has been up all night. At this stage they're positive there is not major damage to his spine/head but they're waiting for a 2nd opinion on x-rays because they found a lump of some sort on his neck and aren't sure what that's from. So, as I know more I'll let you'll know but if you could pray and think of him and my mum and also my family as they're all at home still (it is a 2 day drive from my family's farm to Adelaide and about that from my place to Adelaide if I was to visit (although I could fly there but that's not necessary at this stage). So, it's a waiting game.
Probably should have mentioned five members of the Adelaide Police Band came out five minutes before we went in for Das Rheingold and played a short 2-minute piece that had all the best bits of the Ring (or at least the best brass bits) in one short piece. I thought they were going to do it at every opera as an alternative to the dinging bell that goes off five minutes before you have to run for your seat, but, no, apparently, they were just here for the first opera.
Okay, so we finished up Das Rheingold, and then we went off to have dinner at the Evans' place. We've forgotten whether it was Rachel's dad who was best man at Mr Evans' wedding or vice versa, but there's a connection there somewhere. So we caught up with Mr and Mrs Evans, and their two daughters Sarah and Melissa . . . was it Melissa? I'm going to get in trouble here, I can see . . . Or was it Melinda? I'm sure it started with an M. I'm sure my wife will read this and correct me.
Saturday was spent running around town. I think we got up late, and finally made our way into town to buy stuff we needed for the cricket the next day, like hats, Australian flags, Australian t-shirts, sunscreen, water spray bottles, etc. We also went to Haigh's chocolate factory, which is the equivalent of Darrell Lea down there. Expensive chocolate, though. That didn't stop us buying quite a lot of their chocolate.
And then it was back home, getting all dressed up again (which was quite nasty in the 35 degree heat) and heading back into town for the first of the long ones - Die Walkure. (Supposed to be a couple of dots above the u, but you know what I mean. In English, it's The Valkyrie.)
It was in this one, that Rach and I both started to realise how much Wagner could drag when he gets around to it. However, that said, they pulled this one off fairly well. The production was very clever, because the sets were fairly simple, but not necessarily minimalist. Uncluttered and clean is probably the best way to describe it.
We also got to see Lisa Gasteen as Brunnhilde, and she certainly stole the show. She can just sing and sing and sing at full volume without any trouble at all. Unfortunately, our Wotan couldn't, so he was having a bit of trouble by the end of the night, but he's got a good presence. (He kind of played Wotan like an old bikie.)
Highlight of the night would have to have been the beginning of Act III, which was the Ride of the Valkyries. Traditionally, this is meant to be sung by women riding on flying horses, who ride around and pick up dead warriors off the battle field to take them back to Valhalla. It's getting the flying horses that is the issue. So, instead, they set this scene in a big nightclub called "Wunder Bar" (a play on the German word for "wonderful"). The audience loved it, and were cheering and laughing (most un-Wagnerian things to do).
Of course, things started to get a bit draggy after all the Valkyries disappeared and it was just Brunnhilde getting in trouble from Wotan. (It does go on for 40 minutes, after all.) However, you can't beat that great ending where Wotan leaves his daughter on top of a rock surrounded by fire, especially in this case, because a bit of the floor rose up and real flames shot out of the floor which made it quite spectacular to watch. I'm not sure why, but real flames are really hypnotising on the eyes . . . combine that with the awesome Magic Fire Music at the end of the opera and we all kind of floated out of the theatre . . .
G'day all,
Well, I'm back now, and I'm not going to blog it all in one hit, but after we got back from KI . . .
actually, one bit of KI trivia I forgot to share was the KI wave. This was totally awesome, and I learned it from Rachel's aunt Louise. When two KI locals pass each other when they're driving, they will give each other this little wave by lifting the index finger of their right hand as they go past. (You can do this with the left hand, but it's not as cultured.)
Anyway, when I got a chance to drive, I got totally into it. It was great. Did you know, that if you give the KI wave to a local walking down the street, they'll give it back? It's great! Problem with all the KI driving was that now that I'm back in Sydney, I keep wanting to wave to other cars, but you can't. I'm also struggling to drive fast as well. (It was pretty laid back on KI.)
Ah well . . . we got to Adelaide in our little 3-start apartment 3.5 kms out of town. (However, this wasn't too bad, because there was a bus stop right outside and every bus that stopped there would stop in front of the Festival Centre where we were going.)
The first Friday morning there, we didn't have time for much else other than doing some shopping for groceries and getting dressed for the first opera . . .
which brings us to . . .
Das Rheingold
I'm not sure what it is about going to the opera in the afternoon as opposed to the evening, but it's not at all the same experience. (Couple that with the fact that it was 35 degrees all that day, and that could be part of it.) Felt really hot and awkward on the way up there.
Worse yet, when we got the Festival Centre (which really doesn't have too much breathing room in its foyer area, unlike the Sydney Opera House) it was packed to the gills with old people. And I mean old. Rachel would easily have been the youngest person there. There were probably about five people under the age of 30. There were possibly 20 people in between 30 and 60. The rest would have been over the age of 60. I'm not sure whether it's Wagner, the cost of tickets or what . . . but it was
old . . .
Surprisingly enough, though, the production of the opera felt quite young, with a few snazzy contemporary touches. At the beginning, they blacked out the entire theatre. I thought when they said blackout, they were going to just turn out all the lights. But, no, they even turned out the EXIT lights . . . even the orchestra had to play in the dark.
But gradually, as the overture started to roll (and you've really got to hear this overture . . . it's just arepeggios in D major that start getting faster and faster and faster like water for four minutes), a see-through plastic curtain dropped down and water started to trickle through it. This was the famous water curtain that drops all the water in from the roof and then starts hauling it back up to the top again. It kept going for 20 minutes, which was pretty impressive.
Through the curtain, you could just make out a kind of cube, lit up with lights, with a figure sitting on it. (I now know that it was Erda, the earth goddess.) Then out popped the three Rhinemaidens (wearing wetsuits, believe it or not) and we were off.
The singing was a bit of a mixed bag, especially when you're like me and have been spoilt by CDs. The most surprising thing of all, was that usually you cast your best singer as Wotan, the chief god. He's the main character in the first three operas, so you want him to sound big and majestic.
I don't know how it happened, but the best singer by a country mile was John Wegner, who sang Alberich, the bad dwarf (dressed all in black leather), who steals the gold from the Rhinemaidens at the beginning of the opera. Try as he might, the guy singing Wotan just couldn't compete.
And it wasn't just Wegner's voice. He had greasy shoulder-length black hair, and no matter what they got him to do on stage, he would just powerfully belt out his lines. Absolutely amazing.
There were a lot of other quirky touches (such as the giants being dressed like construction workers, with their own little motorised buggy and their welder's helmets), but on the whole, the production worked really well. The two and a half hours was over before you knew it.
All I can say is, it's a real pity that they're not making a DVD of this . . . ah well . . . maybe some overseas opera company will hire the production and we'll get a DVD that way . . . as long as they have John Wegner as Alberich, I'll be happy . . .
