ToDo: Invent Brilliant Title

Last night, we went to see a symfonikoncert at Operaen.

Operaen is Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller‘s 500 million dollar gift to the Danish people and sits fairly spectacularly on the Copenhagen harbour across from the queen’s house.  It’s not quite the most famous Danish-designed opera house, but it’s commanding from the outside, impressive on the inside and has an amazing view on a beautiful summer evening.

The program was Wagner, Wagner, Strauss.  The middle Wagner had a wailing woman.  She was disappointingly not a fat German in a horned helmet, but instead a hot blonde with an apricot satin dress and insecure body language.  The Strauss was Ein Heldenleben which, rather embarrassingly, I’m familiar with thanks to a Jilly Cooper novel.  The conductor was very exciting, cavorting about in a most entertaining manner, but I wish they’d given him a little platform that didn’t squeak.

During the slow bits (rare, as Strauss and Wagner seem to do really loud and really strident really well), I played High School Politics with the Orchestra members, picking the brain, the princess, the criminal and such-like.  The trumpeters who wandered off in the middle of the third piece and popped back for the end were totally the stoners.  My favourite was the emo percussionist who sat folded in on himself in the middle up the back, hating the world and being all "fuck this orchestra shit" right up until he got to crash his cymbals, when he became master of all he surveyed and more than a little over-dramatic with his flourishes.