Nixon has Entered China but Lisa and I have left the building

This last weekend Lisa and I attended our last opera of the season it was “Nixon in China”. O.k. let me start with a few facts, first of all Chairman Mao was a complete nut case. I really think the guy lived in the wilderness for too many years during WWII. Asian philosophy can be very esoteric and Chinese Communist Philosophy is the most esoteric of all of them. Towards the end of the Chairman’s life he apparently spent hours rambling incoherently and his faithful followers wrote down every word as if it were God speaking to them. Well in a way I guess it was their version of God at that time.

If you are really interested in the details of the opera you can look it up on line but here is the basics: Nixon arrives in China, Mao rambles (for what seems likes hours), they party like rock starts, Madame Mao shows them a typical communist play, Nixon questions why he is there, and then they go home. Lisa and I didn’t wait to see what Madame Mao was up to, at the end of the first act we looked at each other and said, “We got dressed up for this?” I also think the writer of this opera was educated beyond his intelligence. There was no way Nixon was that deep or fun to be around. Also the lyrics were strange and incoherent.

The play was way too red (the whole set was done in red), all the communists were in Blue, and Nixon & Kissinger wire in black. We were drowning in primary colors. The orchestra and the chorus over powered the principle singers. Let’s just say that all in all the opera was not very good. So we left and went to dinner and had a great laugh about the opera. We also had a few drinks.

We also went over to the Italian Street Art Festival in Larimer Square. We stopped over to look around on Saturday when the artists first started drawing. There was some really great artwork that was beginning to take shape. Sadly it rained on Saturday night and many of the artist had to restart there work on Sunday morning and had to race to finish before judging that day.

All in all it was a fun weekend.