Шум за сценой (снова) и Сон в летную ночь (как опера)

***Most of this was written last night, with the translations and pictures added this morning***

Пытаюсь на этот раз чуть-чуть писать на русском. Прошу прошение за ошибки. [I'm trying this time to write a bit in Russian. I apologize for the errors]

Я только что вернулась домой после премеры "Шума за сценой".  Вы, может быть, помните, что была репетиция той пьесы, которую я смотрела несколько раз.  Ну, сегодня была вторая премера (не совсем понимаю почему, но обычно в России есть на менее 3 премеры одной пьесы--в Америке, по-моему только одной) и я бесплатно ее сморела как практикантка театра.

[I just got home after the premier of "Noises Off." You will, perhaps, remember, that it was rehearsals for this show that I watched a few times.  Well, today was the second premier (I'm not sure why, but in Russia there are at least three premiers of one play--in America, I think it's just one) and I got to see it for free as an intern of the theater]

В зале я не знала куда сесть, потому что никто не дал мне биллет, мой руководитель только мне сказала "Войдите, войдите, там свободно". Решила куда сесть и через пару минут ко мне подошла милая тетка.  С начало я думала, что я заняла ее место и она будет сердиться на меня, но она только хотела сесть рядом со мной.  Она, наверно не ожидала встретиться с иностранцем в театре и поэтому говорила очень быстро.  Я только поняла может быть одно слово из пяти, но улыбалась и наделась, чтобы она скоро закнилась.  Вдруг, она задавала меня какой-то вопрос и когда я медлено ответила, сразу поняла, что я--иностранка.

[In the house, I didn't know where to sit because nobody had given be a ticket.  My boss just said "Go in, go in, there are lots of seats." I decided on a seat and a couple of minutes later a woman approached me.  At first I thought that I was in her seat and she was going to yell at me, but it turned out that she just wanted to sit next to me.  She probably didn't expect to meet a foreigner at the theater and so spoke really quickly.  I only understood maybe one word in five, but I smiled and hoped that she'd shut up soon.  Suddenly, she asked me a question and when I slowly answered she understood right away that I was a foreigner.]

Ugh, it's too hard to continue this in Russian.  For those of you who don't speak it, I'm sorry for starting a post like that, I just wanted to try after not writing Russian for a while. I'll translate it later if you care. For now, I'll just finish my story:

As soon as she realized I was foreign, the woman apologized for speaking so quickly and asked why I hadn't said anything. Like many of the questions she asked, this ended up being rhetorical, because just as I was about to respond, she continued with her monologue.  Her name was Natasha (though I didn't find that out until seconds before the first act started), she grew up in St. Petersburg, her father fought in the war and is still alive at 87.  Her daughter works as a French translator and just returned from Algeria where she had been working.  She was home for a few days then left for the dacha with her sister (cousin?), where she's now been for a few weeks. 

Natasha is a philologue and teaches Russian as a Foreign Language.  She taught Moroccans at some point and said they always insisted on calling her "Таваришь мадам" (Comrade Madame--which sounds as odd or stranger in Russian as English).  She learned English in school but dropped it like 50 years ago because she was "lazy".  She also learned Spanish, Polish, German, French and Latin.  She traveled to Cuba in the 1960s, I think, and told me that the reason all the Cubans liked Fidel is he made it so that everything was free for kids under 10--education, bread, milk--she gestured with her hands a bottle 1-1.5 litres big and said "with that much milk you could survive without eating anything else." 

She told me a lot of other stuff that I don't fully remember (and would make this post way too long) but I'll wrap up this section of the post by saying we talked for a total of about 30-45 minutes and I think I said maybe 10 sentences at the most. It was really educational and interesting to hear her life story, but it was a very one-sided conversation as seems to often happen with Russians.  Is it that they're impatient with how long it takes me to be coherent or is it just a Russian trait to monopolize a conversation and tell someone your life story? Seriously, this happens pretty often despite the stereotype of Russians being скритие.

Anyway, the play was really good, which I knew it would be from the few rehearsals and the performance in English I saw in high school.  Not being fluent in Russian, though, the second act was my favorite because it was almost entirely mime (and slapstick mime, at that--three stooges-esque). The costumes and acting were amazing, and the lights and set were basic, but good. If you're in St. Petersburg, I highly recommend seeing it even if you don't speak Russian well.  There's enough physical comedy in it that if you read a synopsis beforehand you'll still be able to follow the story, I think.

---

Which brings me to the other show that I saw recently (the other half of the post title): A Midsummer Night's Dream, the opera by Benjamin Britten, which I saw at the Concert Hall of the Mariinsky Theatre with my friend Nesli.

The libretto for the opera is an abridged version of the Shakespeare play, which I thought was really cool.  As several films have shown us, iambic pentameter means that Shakespeare is easy to rap, and even sing sometimes, but to see it put into an opera is a whole other story.  Nesli and I barely made it to the show, we sprint-hobbled (my knee was bothering me) from the bus stop about 6 or 7 blocks away and made it to the theater 5 minutes after the show was supposed to start, but luckily made it to our seats with a few minutes to spare, as they actually started about 10 minutes late.

As anyone who's seen an opera knows, you're rarely able to understand what the singers are saying because the syllables are so maipulated to make the music pretty. Thus, supertitles are often used so that the audience knows what's going on.  Since this show was in English with Russian supertitles, I rarely knew what the characters were saying unless I happened to remember the scene from the play (it's one of my favorites by Shakespeare, so that happened more than you'd think).  However, because of this I spent a lot more time marvelling at the set, lights, costumes and aerial acrobatics than I did paying attention to the content of the opera.  As it's pretty impossible to describe, here are some photos I took to give you a flavor of what the show was like (click to enlarge):

Oberon and Titania fight

Mortal Lovers enter the forest

Oberon

the Players (Bottom and co.)

I'm not sure why Athenians wear lederhosen, but w/e

Puck bespells Lysander

Titania falls in love with Bottom (who is now an ass-head)

The fairies come to attend Bottom

Oberon observes Demetrius and Helena

Puck gets Hermia to sleep

Puck fixes his mistakes

"Pyramus and Thisbe" at the Court

The Children's Choir (as fairies)

The program (which I got at the first intermission) actually included the full libretto in Russian and English, which was really cool.  I then bought a bottle of water for 150 rubles (insane!) but justified it to myself because the tickets were only 540, which is still a fraction of what opera costs at home.

Tomorrow I'm going to Mazeppa, an opera by Tchaikovsky based on a poem by Pushkin loosely based on a true story from the reign of Peter the Great, which is in Russian with English supertitles so maybe I'll understand what's going on?  I'm going to read up on wikipedia, just in case.

Cinderella

Tonight I went to the ballet with a friend and was again astounded by the artistry of the Marinsky (Kirov) company.  Those who follow this blog will remember that while my family was visiting Peter my parents treated us to front row seats for Swan Lake, making tonight's performance of Cinderella my second time enjoying the best ballet company in St. Petersburg.

Let me start at the beginning: about half way through my bus journey to the theater, two girls sat next to and across from me, looking rather dressed up.  With a quick glance down at my own attire--especially the flip-flops i was wearing instead of heels for the benefit of my bad knee--my first thought upon seeing these two was, 'God, I hope they're not going to the ballet, too. I'll feel even more underdressed than I'd expected to.'

Two stops later, the leggy blonde next to me turned and asked, "Do you speak English--a little?"

With an inner chuckle, I removed my earbuds and replied, "Yes."

"Thank God.  Do you know how to get to this theater?" She asked, while pointing to the Mariinsky on her tourist map (the kind you get from a hotel).

"Actually, I'm going there myself."

"Oh, you are going to the ballet? Do you think we will get there in time?"

"I certainly hope so," I tried to sound confident, even though I'd been worrying about that exact issue ever since getting on the bus.  We did, in the end, arrive with about 15 minutes to spare, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.  Turns out that these two girls were from Switzerland (the German speaking part, as I found out when they talked to each other). They were visiting a friend who, I guess, speaks and/or is Russian, but she had spent the day at work and left these two to navigate public transport on their own--only knowing, in their words, numbers and a few words of Russian.  Needless to say, they got turned around  and were very grateful that I could provide directions.

The weirdest part of the ride, however, was the man sitting across from me who, when I mentioned being from the US, asked which state.  He said that he was from San Francisco, although his accent made me wonder if he'd grown up somewhere in Eastern Europe.  Anyway, when I said I was from Massachusetts, this guy (who very much looked the part of the California hippie with his shoulder length greasy/unwashed hair and woven tote bag) asked me, of all things, how the weather was in Boston.  When I tried to explain that I haven't been home in a while, he kept talking about how he's heard that the weather there has been terrible recently.  Thankfully he got off soon after, leaving me to just awkwardly sit picking up words here and there in the conversation of the Swiss-Germans.

Arriving at the theater, I successfully found my way to the correct section and found my seat, even having the courage to ask for directions from a few ushers.  I guess after being asked for directions myself from several Russians, I'm gaining more confidence about it.

The ballet was amazing, but not really what I'd expected.  The Swan Lake performance was very traditional, with over-the-top costumes and sets reminiscent of the 19th century.  Prokofiev's Cinderella, on the other hand, looked a lot more like a modern dance performance, with minimalistic sets, scaffolding, and simple costumes.  As I said, though, it was amazing.  I'd never really thought of ballet as a comic medium, but there were several moments of this show that were simply hilarious.  Cinderella's father comes home drunk, with all of the built-in comedy that entails, but also remains oddly graceful throughout the whole thing, somehow.  There was also a scene wherein the step-sisters are given a dance lesson and can't dance. The juxtaposition of a well-choreographed "bad" dance was just ridiculous.


The lighting and other technical aspects of the show were spectacular as well. I even took a few photos at my favorite lighting moments, but I'm too lazy to upload them now. Maybe I'll put them up here later.

In other news, this weekend I (finally) went to the cemetery at the Alexander Nevsky Lavra and saw (among others) the graves of Dostoevsky, Tchaikovsky and Rubenstein.  I'll post some photos of that soon, too.

Как трудно быть самостоятельной (It's hard to be independent)

Surprise! It's another blog post.

It's now been almost a week since my family left and I've been fending for myself meal-wise. This would probably be hard in any city (as I've not done it before), but in a place without many of the groceries I'm familiar with, it's quite a challenge.

In a mixture of laziness and lack of courage in the grocery stores (there are 3 less than a block from my building), I've been mostly eating eggs with cheese and tomatoes mixed in for dinner. I did buy some chicken breasts a couple days ago, but I have yet to figure out Russian spices and thus haven't been brave enough to try cooking them. The stifling heat recently hasn't helped either. Russian bread and пряники have also become staples of my admittedly vitamin-lacking diet. I'm really going to make an effort to do better this week.

Perhaps I should explain. There are a few standards of the stuff I cook at home that I've been unable to buy here. First, spices, etc: salt was obvious, though I'm still not sure which type I ended up with.  Flour and baking powder are also found in abundance, but I don't plan on making anything that involves them (too complex).  Things I still haven't found: pepper (not in little ball form), baking soda ("soda" here seems to refer to the powder--yes Mom, I DO know the difference)--which I wouldn't cook with but would be useful for cleaning.  Vanilla extract and cinammon are also sadly absent, but easier to live without than pepper.  Needless to say, I haven't even tride to find more exotic spices.

The worst thing, though, is fruit and vegetables.  There's some mysterious scale system used to weigh the products and thus price them, which the buyer is supposed to do before going to checkout.  The problem is, though all the Russian seem to know how it works, I'm as yet too intimidated by the notorious "public face" of the Russian public to ask someone to explain it to me. For now I'll stick to canned peas and carrots.

The other option for fruits (and a limited number of vegetables) is the stands that can be found all over the city.  The problem there is that most of them sell everything except the stuff I'd actually like to buy. Though it does tend to look fresher than the stuff in the store.  I may work up the courage this week for a visit to the market a couple kilometers away (where a professor took us on a field trip in March).  We'll see, haggling with people who are either very dismissive of foreigners or are immigrants themselves and don't speak Russian very well is not really an attractive prospect to me.

As a bonus, here are some photos I've taken since my return:

Moscow:

 

Pushkin Museum-Dior Exhibit

my favorite family photo

view from my family's hotel at 11:30 pm (yes, that is sunset)

Then we went to the Hermitage

And Swan Lake at the Marinsky

And climbed the Collonade of St. Isaacs

Apparently dumpsters alight is normal? (this was around 12:30am)

And then I realized I live around the corner from the offices of the Communist Party

2:00 am--twilight or pre-dawn?

Long time coming

Hello again, blogosphere!

Now that I'm back in St. Petersburg after being home for a month (where my dad constantly asked when I was going to post again) I decided a new post is probably long overdue.  In an effort to keep this entertaining, I'm not going to describe everything that's happened since the last post, but if any of you are interested in hearing more about any of the following events, please leave a comment or send me an email (techchik218@gmail.com--don't judge, it's one I made a while ago).

Anyway, since May 15, here's what's happened:

• The final banquet for ACTR, where we ate, drank and were merry. Also where each class performed a skit. I starred as a mosquito, while the other 3 in my group were a frog, a rooster (with a yellow tie as his петушок), and a bear (who wore my fur hat and some big winter gloves.
• An interesting/pathetic adventure finding a wine as a gift for one professor
• Returning home at around midnight to discover gifts my host family had left on my bed, immediately making me feel guilty.
• Saying goodbye to my host family
• Staying up all night because we were leaving for the airport at 3am (by which time sunrise was already starting--white nights!)
• Flying home
• Anticlimactic goodbyes to ACTR people, followed by getting lost on the way to my grandparents' apartment (despite having my grandfather in the back seat)
• Visiting relatives in DC
• Getting 2 wisdom teeth out, but getting WICKED swollen this time
• Lazing around my house for almost an entire month
• Watching the Stanley Cup finals with my Dad (BRUINS!!)
• Going to a Katy Perry concert with my sister
• Flying to Moscow via Heathrow, in first class for the first leg of the trip because my parents used almost all of their accumulated frequent flier miles (so awesome but makes me wonder how terrible my flight home in august will feel in comparison)
• 2 days and 3 nights in Moscow; Red Square, lock bridge, Dior exhibit at the Pushkin, metro
• 5 days guiding my family around St. Petersburg
• Front row seats at a Marinsky production of Swan Lake (that's the Kirov for those of you still living in the Soviet era)
• Cleaning my apartment with my parents, as my Dad was certain I had either bedbugs or fleas. Good news: I don't! Bad news: he first suggested this in the middle of the ballet, which then distracted me for the rest fo the performance.
• 3 days of being independent (and lazy--have only eaten eggs, toast, and yogurt except for the attempt at oatmeal this morning)

also let me know if you want to know about the Dostoevsky tour and/or my trip to the south--hometowns of both Chekhov and Medea

More posts to come as I start my internship on Monday and tomorrow is "Dostoevsky Day" at Сенная Плошадь, which I plan to check out.

Please respond to let me know someone's still reading this and to tell me which adventure you'd like me to expand upon.

From SPb with love, Sasha