20230615 Tosca at the Oslo opera house

Despite having been awake for 30 hours I slept fitfully, waking every hour or so from a little after midnight. Amanda was also not feeling tired but instead of pretending to sleep she got up at 3am to go birding. At this latitude and time of year it's light 20 hours a day with two hours of twilight, and two of darkness.

Amanda heard magpies chattering and got pictures of a fox crossing the road outside the house. Ja lives in a nice neighborhood and the primary sounds were chattering magpies and the heavy drone of bumblebees tapping at the windows. It was unusually hot in Oslo and we ended up never using our winter clothing. The temperature most days was in the upper 80s and we went swimming more often than I'd planned.

In the morning the kid went off to daycare and on our first full day in Oslo Amanda and I went on a walk through the local park to the river. The local field was packed with hundreds of teenagers playing volleyball, soccer, and cricket. We learned later there was some sort of summer festival going on and everyone was out in the city.

I laughed at the sign that seemed to suggest the park was named after Bruce Springsteen but this was a notice that he would be holding a concert there in a few weeks. We made our way to the little stream that wanders through the city and followed it down into the city. Ja suggested we could find places to jump in and cool off but I never felt comfortable enough to get in. We followed the river down into the city, breaking away to do shop for clothing and to buy a sandwich, cinnamon roll, and a sangrini.

Before we left the house I'd mentioned offhand that I'd been looking for a wool t-shirt and ja showed me a t-shirt he bought at a local sports store called Northern Playground. The fabric was a wool silk blend. Since we were close, we decided to stop in. I was prepared to spend $60 on a fancy t-shirt in an expensive city but it was $80. They had a jacket on the rack for $750. On the way out of the store I discovered this shopping center (Folketeaterpassasjen) was the same one that held the pretzel girl. Throughout our time in the city we kept running into her over and over again like she was our flexible spirit animal.

It was hot and Amanda was already regretting packing only winter clothing so after buying my shirt, we visited the other sports stores in the area looking for a pair of shorts. We visited several stores before she found something she liked and she wore them out of the store. I was struggling to stay awake as we walked back to the house and I knew I would have a hard time at the Opera later that night.

Shortly after we got back to the house Grandma arrived to babysit the kid and Sine, Amanda, and I took bus 34 to Oslo S to walk to the opera house. Before visiting the opera we got food at a street food court and spent a frustrating half hour trying to order through their shitty web portal. Nothing looked very appetising and it seemed every time I finally decided on a dish the website would tell me the store was closed and forget everything else Amanda and Sine had ordered. We went to talk with one of the vendors and had to order three or four times before it finally worked. On our first good opportunity to get to know Sine I impressed her with my encyclopedic knowledge of professional wrestling and heavy metal.

The doors to the opera house were open and no one checked our tickets as we walked in and took our seats. It seemed like the paper tickets printed in Monterey and carried halfway across the world were mostly used to resolve disputes. The seats were high above the stage and so elevated we were in more danger of falling to our deaths than having our view obstructed by a lady in a big hat. In front of each of our seats was a little digital display that showed a real time translation of the opera in Norwegian or English.

The opera was a contemporary take on the classic Tosca. Before visiting Norway we listened to the 120min opera a few times and Amanda used her encyclopedic knowledge of musicals to explain the plot to Sine and I. In this version the thief was a hippie looking guy that came out on the barren stage holding up a cardboard sign that read "Your silence will not save you".

It was clear the show had started but it wasn't clear what was happening. He wasn't moving or speaking, just holding up a sign. The audience sat in silence for an uncomfortably long time and then someone started to clap and the crowd joined in as if they'd solved the riddle but the hippie didn't move or lower the sign. After a while the clapping died away and it looked like we were in for another long stretch of watching some dude holding a sign when the music started.

The orchestra was the best I've ever heard in person and the singers were amazing. Opera singers have unusual skills you don't encounter in normal life. We were in the nosebleed seats and their unamplified voices could still be heard loud and clear.

The choreography was surprisingly sexual for a live opera. At one point Tosca and Caravaggio are fucking on stage, she has her legs up and he's on top of her (clothed) and while this was happening they were still singing so loud we could hear everything clearly. I drew a picture of the scene in my notebook.

Later on in the play, Scarpa gets really handy with Tosca and when she finally relents to his advances she undoes his pants and tears open his shirt. It was shocking because it was unclear just how far they were going to take it.

There was also a naked older woman painted silver who I think was supposed to be a metaphor for the Mother Mary. She hung out on the stage for most of the opera and most of the actors ignored her though in one scene she was whipped by Scarpa for an uncomfortably long time. As he whipped her she shrieked and cried, rolling around on the stage leaving smears of silver paint.

Though the music and the singers were great I thought the choreography was questionable. I didn't like the midgets playing slow motion patty cake or the young boy that spent 5 minutes dramatically licking a lollipop before smashing it on the ground and jumping up and down on the pieces for way too long.

At the end of the opera they dressed Caravaggio like Ronald McDonald to indicate he was dead. As Amanda explained it, when Tosca learns of his death she jumps to her death but in this version she just stood at the end of the stage. A lot of the choreography was uncomfortable and bizarre and I don't know what the director was trying to say. Despite the weird choreography, excellent music, and amazing singers, I struggled to stay awake. I kept closing my eyes, my mind would wander, then I'd open them again, there would be amazing music playing and actors on the dark stage with a naked woman painted silver watching from a few feet away.

The stage was an undecorated black surface lined on each side by large black walls. As the opera went on, the walls slowly contracted, moving together so slowly and inconsistently I wondered for most of the show whether they were moving at all. I only caught them in the act by comparing the corner of one of the walls to the silver paint smudges left on the stage when Scarpa whipped the naked woman.

By the end of opera the stage was just a narrow channel everyone had to squeeze between but for the dramatic finale the walls were pulled back and a crowd of singers ran through this space to the front of the stage.