As I mentioned previously, I’m not an opera goer and was not familiar with the material. I was told that I would have probably heard some of the music used in Butterfly and that the plot shouldn’t be a big surprise as it’s a commonly occurring one (I won’t spoil it in case you don’t know what I’m talking about). Both these points turned out to be very true.
As before, we were given a backstage tour before the show which I quite enjoy.
The set this time around was quite different from Norma’s with its vertigo inducing lines and bold shapes and colours. On the tour, Kelsey suggested that it could easily be used as a set for a 60′s game show.
I love seeing the ‘craft’ that goes into a production of this scale after my humble beginnings producing plays in local *cough no budget cough* theatre.
Unlike my previous visit to the Opera, this time we had front row seats. I liked this A LOT. It dramatically improved my appreciation for what was unfolding on stage where I could see every nuance of the actors performances as well as a perfect view of the stage. If I stood up a little, I could even peer down into the orchestra pit:
Last time, I was fairly far back on the main floor. Not a horrible place to view the Opera from by any means, it’s just a much better experience in the front in my opinion.
Puccini’s music certainly was familiar to me. As had been suggested to me, it has been used in many movies before. It was nice to finally connect the dots on something like this so I now know where it came from.
Again, like last time, this Opera reminded me of a videogame. Due to it’s strikingly bold colours & costumes, strong visuals and somewhat nautical theme (thanks to Mr. Pinkerton), I was immediately thinking of the Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. The game contains many similar traits to Madama Butterfly with it’s family ties, bold colours, dramatic music and many simple characters. The musical interlude between the second and third acts even further strengthened this connection for me with the three panels of video projections that could have easily been produced for the videogame (this isn’t a bad thing).
Due to my seat in the front row, the surtitles above weren’t that readable without craning my neck but I found the story easy enough to follow along without too many looks upward.
I thoroughly enjoyed this performance. Clocking in at around 2 hours 40 minutes, I can’t recall a single time when I was thinking it was dragging or was slow. It actually seemed to be fairly quick and before I knew it, I was backstage afterwards meeting the cast.
One final thing that still surprises me that happens during the final bows at the end of both Opera’s I’ve attended is the extended ovation that gradually builds as the performers come out. For Butterfly, it went on for a long time and it was cool to see the passion the audience had for these performers. It’s not often you see an older gentleman hoot and holler while wearing a tux.
As a side note, this post and photos was mostly created on the iPad during the course of the evening…which in itself was fun thanks to a number of curious Opera goers inquiring about it during the intermission.
After finally obtaining the camera connection kit for the iPad, I thought it would be a good test to see if you could in fact, use an iPad completely in place of a laptop to photograph/process/upload photos, and write a blog post on the spot.
It almost worked.
I was able to shoot backstage photos, download them to the iPad, post-processed a few favs with the Camerabag for iPad app, upload them to Flickr/Twitter during the performance straight off the iPad.
Using the WordPress iPad app proved to be the weakest link unfortunately…I had to resort to my laptop (at home later since I didn’t bring it to the show) because the app was too flaky for my workflow and it was tedious to switch back and forth from Flickr to the app to paste in the photos (I rarely upload my photos directly into WordPress, but instead embed them from my Flickr account) – it probably would have better to simply use Safari for the WordPress side for this task.
That aside, I am impressed with how well the photo side of things worked out and look forward to being to upload photos on the go at other events.
This past weekend was the 5th year of the Northern Voice conference out at UBC…and my 3rd year attending.
Thanks to a recent car accident, I didn’t take many photos but instead spent a couple of days in sessions, visiting with old friends and, as usually happens at Northern Voice, met a bunch of new ones. Strangely, the conference has gotten so big that I actually saw some friends across the room but never had a chance to say hi since the room was so freaking big.
Like previous years, there was a PhotoCamp session and I gave a presentation covering how I make timelapse videos with a still camera. My presentation was loosely based on a post I did a little while ago and was frankly surprised at the positive reception the presentation got. The post covers off, in greater detail, the steps to combine still photos into an image sequence so I won’t bother posting my slides. I showed a number of videos to help illustrate the result including this one made from over 2200 still photos as kind of an end run around the fact that I wasn’t accredited to shoot video, just stills at the Paralympic Games:
On the second day of the conference, I was part of the panel talking about Our Olympic Experience which covered the social media outcomes from the games. Also on the panel was Andrew Lavigne talking about With Glowing Hearts, the feature length documentary he’s working on about the impacts the olympic games have on the local community. He shot a ton of footage before, during and after the games…including a few bits with me. Andrew talked about the film and showed the latest cut of the demo reel for it. They are currently looking for distribution options to help complete the editing of the film.
Once again I had a great time…even if I was heavily medicated during most of it thanks to my back injury. I was also able to give both presentations via my iPad and the VGA cable which worked great.
All the sessions were videotaped so once they are packaged up, I’ll update this post with any relevant links or embeds.
Update: Stephen Hui has some photos up on the Georgia Straight’s site that he took at the conference. I finally got to meet Stephen in person and he also spoke about his Olympic experiences alongside Andrew, kk, Scales and myself.
I was in Whistler this past weekend so I sent my good friend, Peter Andersen in my place to The Marriage of Figaro at the Vancouver Opera. Here’s his guest post & photos (a first for my site) of the event:
What’s the recipe for a Blogger Night at the Opera? A table of laptops, black coffee and a Twitter photo booth at the ready. Mix in eager blogger participants (myself, Tris Hussey, Gus Fosarolli and Kelsey Dundon) and you get the clicking of keys on laptops before the show and – even more frantically – during the intermission.
Thanks to Ling Chan and John Biehler, my wife Marilyn and I were able to attend this Blogger Night At the Opera, which turned out to be a very enjoyable experience for both of us. Sitting at the table in the lobby pre-show for the opening night of The Marriage of Figaro at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre felt a little like “bloggers on parade”, but it was very social as well. Plenty of friendly people dropping by to see what we were up to, with lots of questions about both the blogging world and that thing called the iPad that I happened to be working with (thx for the insight, Tris :p).
Having no opera experience whatsoever, I had no idea what I was in for. I did the usual Wikipedia lookup beforehand, and at least understood that I was going to see a comedic opera by Mozart. After we were settled in at the table, Terry Harper (Director of Production) came around and introduced himself before taking us on our backstage tour. It was a treat to be able to go behind the curtain and see the sets up close. An amazing amount of detail is visible everywhere, from props to backdrops. We learned a few interesting bits as well, like the fact that the complete set – costumes and all – was rented from Alberta. We also learned sticky floors are preferred by the actors, and are achieved with a mop and mixture of Coca-Cola and water.
Backstage
So for those of you that are opera-unaware like me, there are a few things to know. First, don’t worry about not knowing the language the opera is performed in. Thanks to “surtitles“, which are displayed above the stage, an English interpretation lets you follow what’s going on. Second, while being up close to the performers is a treat, if you sit very close (as we were fortunate enough to do) the surtitles end up being miles above your head. It’s critical that you get very skilled very quickly at looking up, looking back at the stage, looking up, looking back at the stage. I’m sure this is secretly done to amuse the performers as they play ’spot the newbies’ when looking out at us.
While I normally would prefer sitting up close like this during a live concert, I would recommend sitting further back in this case. I think for those of us that haven’t been to an opera before, or haven’t been much, sitting back far enough to see both the entire stage and the surtitles at once without taking your eyes completely off the performance would be beneficial. Fight the urge to buy the best, and give the close seats to those that know the language or the opera well and can take it in seamlessly.
I was told The Marriage Of Figaro is a great “first opera” and I for one am glad I was initiated by it. It was very enjoyable from start to finish. The story was well written and well accompanied, but the best entertainment came from the performers themselves. All of the players were very skilled vocally, as expected, but they also seemed right at home doing physical comedy. It was a great combination overall, and the 3+ hour length went by surprisingly quickly. It was also great to see the Vancouver area so well represented, with many of the cast members hailing from the Lower Mainland (including the Count, Countess and Marcellina). I also noticed that the packed house was full of all ages – good to see the variety and the interest for opera being so high.
The night ended with an after-party behind the stage where we got to mix & mingle with the cast & crew. It gave us another opportunity to show our appreciation for a great night. Thanks again to Ling and John for this opportunity, and I’m sure that another opera is in my future. Madama Butterfly…let’s see… a Japanese tragedy by Puccini, performed in Italian with English surtitles. Sounds perfect.
Thanks to Peter for filling in and the guest post of his experience at the Opera. Also check out my previous post about my first time at the Opera – John
After three weeks, over 17,000 photos and hours of video, the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics are done. It feels strange to see the city slowly transform itself back to the pre-Olympic state (with some Paralympic exceptions).
Once I get back from SXSW mid-March, I’ll jump into the Paralympics as much as I can using my True North Media House badge. I’m also still waiting to hear from Nikon about my D90 that got a little too exposed to the elements during my adventures. I’m hoping it can simply dry out and work again but we’ll see in about a week.
For now, here’s a highlight video I made using various video and photographic content I created during the games:
Today, Duane helped get the ball rolling with the announcement that WordCamp Vancouver 2010 planning had begun with June 12th, 2010 the current tentative date.
I’ve attended a lot of WordCamps over the years…in a lot of different places. I’ve even had the honour to speak at a few of them too. This time around, I’m on the organizing committee…it remains to be seen if I’ll be speaking as it’s early days so we’ll see how things play out.
WordCamp has been a pretty fantastic place to meet some pretty awesome people, share information about the WordPress platform and have a great time. I learn something new every time I attend one.
If you’re interested in anything to do with blogging or WordPress, I encourage you to sign up for the email updates and/or follow us on Twitter. We’ll share more information as soon as we have more details!
