Much Ado About Something

WINTER WONDERMENT: Thursday morning sparkled plenty. We awoke to a couple of inches of snow. So pretty!

I snapped the photo above at about 7:30 a.m. A few hours later, I saw our neighborhood's Facebook page put out notice of a photo contest, and asked readers to share. I posted the photo above and ended up winning the contest. My 'prize' is the photo is featured as the neighborhood's cover photo for a week.  Not 'get rich' type winnings, but a nice nod.

FANCY PANTS: Thursday night we did something very sophisticated. We went to the opera! :)

A friend helped secure us seats to a full dress rehearsal of Seattle Opera's production of "Beatrice and Benedict" at McGraw Hall, on the Seattle Center campus. 

We had great seats just a few rows from the stage. The sets were impressive, the staging first rate, the acting was on point, and the script and show were entertaining. 

The photo below is from much further away than our seats. I had a coughing fit during the second act and had to step out for awhile, and finally snuck back in to the back row until I was sure it subsided.

The opera is based on Shakespeare's play "Much Ado about Nothing." The program we got at the show noted that in the title, the final word was pronounced 'noting' in Shakespeare's time, and referred to eavesdropping. So it's not truly nothing after all, it's just the kinds of things you might misunderstand if you're eavesdropping!

CJ and Annabelle have a bit to share regarding the show. I'll post CJ's thoughts first. ...

Last night, my family drove through a snowy night near Seattle Center to visit the Seattle Opera's first dress rehearsal. We visited for the Opera's first dress rehearsal of the 1862 play Beatrice & Benedict, written by French playwright Hector Berlioz. Beatrice & Benedict is heavily based off of William Shakespeare's 1599 play Much Ado About Nothing.

The program given to guests at the opera describes the plot as follows:

The titular Benedict and Beatrice are the main characters of the play. Beatrice is "A young woman who hates men (and Benedict most of all)." Similarly, Benedict is "A young soldier who hates women (and Beatrice most of all)." The play was in two acts (with a short intermission), and was two and a half hours long.

For the entirety of the play, there was a large set resembling old Italian buildings on stage. Much of the dialogue was difficult to understand, but thankfully, there was a screen above the stage that often had subtitles of the speech on it.

And Annabelle has this to say. ... 

“Beatrice & Benedict” is the Seattle Opera’s adaption of the classic Shakespeare play Much Ado about Nothing. The story begins when a troop of soldiers returning to the town of Sicily from a successful battle. While a celebration begins, the two titular characters begin to square off on how they would never be married to anyone, and how much they hate the other’s guts. On the other end of the spectrum, Claudio, one of Benedict’s fellow soldiers, falls in love with Hero, Beatrice’s cousin. This angers Don John, the army general Don Pedro’s brother, and he devises a plot to ruin their plans for marriage. Meanwhile,Beatrice and Benedict’s acquaintances plan to make the two realize they’re in love by pretending to gossip and willfully letting them overhear it. Beatrice and Benedict fall for it and each other, but Don John’s plan is about to succeed in splitting apart Claudio and Hero! As the two relationships reverse,there’s only so much time before Claudio and Hero’s wedding is called off! 

The play, while having a bit of spoken dialogue, tells most of its story through song. The songs, however, would be almost unintelligible if it weren’t for the “supertitle” lyrics displayed on a screen at the top of the stage. The acoustics in the theater are horrid, but the Seattle Opera will soon get their own opera house. The play itself was rather entertaining, and the translators did an excellent job with some of the songs that were originally in French. I would recommend the show to anyone who loves Shakespeare and romance, as some of the language and jokes are rather dated. It was a fun experience and I’d be open to seeing the Seattle Opera again, perhaps not in that venue.

Here's the Seattle Opera's trailer for the show. 


There are many more audio and video files about the production on the Seattle Opera's website. And they even have the entire dialogue to the play in a PDF on their site. Cool!