Highlights from the pizza part! Homemade crust turned out really well again! Alexis was shocked that it made such a big difference, compared to the pizza he usually made with storebought crust. We had a lot of fun cooking and chatting about physics, Alexis’s plans, his family, and so on.

I was squeezing in some work after an absolutely lovely run on my usual route to the viewpoint near the Irchel campus and got a message from Muriel–she was arriving in the HB in 20 minutes or so, and I could hop on her train to get to the opera. I quickly switched to my khakis that I’d folded sideways to simulate a pleat–it had worked! and put on Alexis’s suit over my humdrum gray button-down. I debated whether to go tie or no tie. I thought, this tie with that button-down–this is the kind of thing a goofball like me would do, that nobody with actual class would attempt ;) But I went and tried it on anyway, and it worked great. So little of the button down was showing under the suit and tie that it faded into the background, as intended–and that suit was dashing!

I ran down to the train station and hopped onto the train. Some technical glitch caused a little stop and some hilarious WhatsApp banter–Muriel tried to simulate sci-fi English :D

We poured off with hundreds of other people at the Stadelhofen station and found each other in the subterranean walkways beneath. Muriel was dressed in her elegant white jacket. We walked in the direction of the opera house, onto the great square of smooth grey tiles before it. It was a lovely place, even in the near-darkness obscuring the river. And the opera house was very majestic. Muriel left her jacket in the garderobe upon request (how they knew it was outerwear and not a new style of formal dress was beyond me) revealing an equally elegant costume. (For some reason we didn’t take any pictures, crying emoji) We found the ticket counter and got in line for student tickets. Muriel was stressing about her student card (her dog literally ate it)–she’d brought an official document of enrollment instead. After some hemming and hawing, the fellow accepted the document and we got two tickets on the balcony.

I offered my arm and we swept up the red carpeted stairs to the third floor and found our booth. We had the three seats of the front row all to ourselves, which was lovely.

Continuation

Now the veil of time stands between me and the memory; I hope it does not distort too much.

But yeah, it was great! We joked about examining the other operagoers with imaginary opera glasses for a bit while we waited for the show to start, then the lights dimmed.

The stage was set in stark grey, with three heavy-looking metal coffins on the floor. And the play upon it was dramatic from the first scene. A woman was weeping for the loss of her brothers and fathers in the war; but could reach no conclusion in her emotional agony, her turning between grief and revenge and perhaps yearning for the main character, Idomeneo, before a young fellow came in, and asked her to love him or condemn him to death with a rejection (or something like that). Despite the wild drama of the first scene, I was able to take the rest of the opera pretty seriously. The singing was awesome, just badass voices able to hold strident notes for vocal eternities and make complex transitions and riffs look easy. In the transition between scenes, shades of the dead (from the Trojan war and later from other) would walk in and out, singing, and in doing so change the set. (That device was pretty clever.) The shades were lit in eerie white from outside the set, “beyond the grave”.

The action on the stage counterpointed an equally vivacious drama (in my mind) and riot of buzzing emotions arising from holding hands, letting go of hands, whispering little comments, and other little touching things. Alexis’s suit made my arm perfect for hanging onto :D

At the intermission, we walked out onto the balcony and drank delicious glasses of wine. I think this wine thing is slowly growing on me. We talked of the clever ways the opera had been staged and generally enjoyed the classiness pervading the whole atmosphere.

The opera, shockingly, ended happily (after lots of carnage, to be sure), with a great little stage fight scene where Idomeneo stops his daughter from committing suicide. Bravo Mozart and the Zürich Opernhaus!

We took the train back to Culmann to have some of the key lime pie I’d made earlier. It turned out to be really good, and the crust, while not quite as crunchy as a graham cracker crust, played about the right role flavor-wise. It even enticed Muriel to a second piece, which I think for her is a rarity :D

We hung out for a bit longer before Muriel had to catch her train, then I walked her down to the station :)