  A night at the opera Again. It was a few weeks back and I'm just willing to articulate it now, seeing as how the urlLink COC season is officially over and my embarrassing story won't affect anyone's viewing of the opera in question: Die Walkure (the one with the Apocalypse Now helicopter song in it). While waiting in line for our cheap youth-tickets we were informed over and over that "Die Walkure is really really long. It's 3 and a half hours and with intermissions, the opera that starts at 7:00 will end at 11:30 or later". Sure, we can hack it, we can handle it, we're all cultured and shit. No. We're not. After a long work day, my girlfriend and I met up and had a beer and some dinner before the show. How are you doing? Think we can handle it? Yeah I'm pretty tired too. We got to the Hummingbird Centre early and killed time in the usual way: We looked at the walls and walls of photographs of the previous shows and stars to visit the Hummingbird/Okeefe Centre, and tried to count how many times Liberace played on stage over the years. We're up to 400 so far. That guy really liked Toronto for some reason... He was so good to his mother.
The show starts, and not really being familiar with Wagner, I initially compared the long lost brother and sister twins Siegmund and Sieglind, to Luke and Leia....that is, until they had sex, fully aware of their common history. What the hell is wrong with German people? The opera is long. The music is dark and brooding, and meant to be sung at a snail's pace. It was very cool to see these all-powerful gods and supernatural beings fighting for power, and being bound to their own contracts and decisions....but it wasn't enough to keep us in our seats.
Wracked with guilt, we finally slunk away at 10:00, just after the 2nd act mercifully drew to a close. There was still an intermission and a 3rd act on the slate. We chastised ourselves for not being more cultured.
We made excuses and justified our 7th inning dash to beat traffic. We were tired, it was a school night, but all the same, we felt bad; that is, until we got to King station, and rode the train home with the other 10 people in our car alone who were all clutching their opera programs and wearing decidedly less guilty looks on their faces. On the whole I liked Rigoletto much better then Die Walkure, but I think that has more to do with the fact that I just like urlLink seeing clowns emotionally tortured. 
