Wartburg

I was excited to see Zubin Mehta conducting Tannhauser at La Scala on my first day in Italy.  The production of Act One was stunning, like a pornographic Cirque du Soleil (see it at http://mostlyopera.blogspot.com/2010/03/fura-del-baus-tannhauser.html).  My $100 ticket entitled me to a red satin upholstered bench behind a smartly dressed young couple whose seats had backs.  The other occupants of our cramped box were a chatty young opera buff and a young woman who I think said she was a singer.  The chatty young man and I stood throughout Act One -- you really couldn't take your eyes away from the spectacle on stage.  The second act was silly, set in Bollywood style, when Wagner so famously preferred Lutheran blondes.  Of course Tannhauser and the other male executives showed no skin.  I skipped the third act, which I later learned was also controversial with a cameo by the late Pope John Paul II.  If I hadn't been so weary from standing, I would have liked to see the director's treatment of the blosssoming mystic branch after the long, painful deaths of the leads, signifying God's forgiveness of Tannhauser's vacillations.  Though I couldn't see much, I could hear the beautiful music perfectly, and the tiny supertitle screens in our box cast a dim bluish light on the irrelevant and self-referential (to the composer) plot.  I walked over to the Galleria Vittorio Emmanuele II and ordered osso bucco with risotto milanese and a glass of chianti, had a quick look at the Cathedral and adjacent jumbotron and got back to Hotel ABC by 11 or so.  Very fun first night!