The Opera

After the SotP conference, and before the Armenian Festival, I had a chance to go to the NYC Opera and see a production of Mozart's Don Giovanni.
I'll grant you, I wasn't terribly looking forward to this to begin with. This trip was part of a class assignment for Music Hum, and while I'm glad they want to take advantage of the city and use it as a learning tool, I wish we could have gone to a different opera. This one is a story about a shameless womanizer who gets chased around because of his villiany and eventually goes to hell as punishment for his misdeeds. And then the story ends. I've heard it's supposed to be a sort of 'dark comedy', but I didn't find it particularly entertaining. (I actually left during the intermission, but don't tell my instructor that).
After having been there, I can comfortably say that opera is just not an art form I enjoy very much. Oh, and someone apparently forgot to tell the ushers there that the highbrow/lowbrow distinction in art is gone now, because they were quite rude to me. I assumed that I couldn't take pictures during the show, but why not take pics 15 minutes before the curtain goes up? It's a beautiful building (this is a shot of the main stage taken before they shut me down). After I took it, I was told by two different ushers quite pointedly that pictures were not allowed in the auditorium at ANY time. I wasn't given a reason. Because I was there for a class, I decided not to make a scene. I just also decided not ever to go back.
I hear opera in NYC is very good if it's your thing, but if you've got limited dollars and time, go for Broadway or something else and leave this to the snooty upper class and their killjoy rules.