Why Opera could actually be Reality TV

So after all the nastiness of the week, I was very VERY happy to meet up with my friend E for our evening of ...

Seeing Carmen at the Met!

Can I just say how excited I was? I definitely have a list of things I want to do in New York and seeing an opera at the Met was near the top! Now, obviously, we got all dolled up (because duh, any chance to wear nice clothes after bumming it around in grad school) and even hit up a fancy bistro (Epicerie Boulud) beforehand.

Yes, I was definitely camwhoring it up in the fancy mirror at E.B. while E. was off somewhere. Also, I loved my outfit (and I finally got to wear my beautiful silky-smooth red blazer! I mean, it's hard to wear it in the hot and humid NYC summer because of all the unladylike sweating ... and I mean, I can't wash it or anything because then I'd have to iron it out and well, I'll be honest - I'm not going to be doing that). Unfortunately, my nice black Steve Madden heels died after this night by splitting along the seams (which is apparently hinting at that fact that my feet are too fat? Wow. Have to rethink some things now ...). But the blazer lives on in unwashed glory!

Also, this was my first time seeing the interior of the Met and can I just say, OH. MY. GOD. It's just so gorgeous. When I wasn't people watching (and that was also a very fruitful endeavour - my God, people have some VERY nice clothes here ... and also some questionable ones), I was definitely admiring the decor.

I mean, would you look at those chandeliers? Magical. And inside the theater? Also very spacious and very beautiful.

Now let's talk about the opera itself. Here's the thing - Carmen is fucking sexy. It is basically a 3 hour stripping-sexy dancing-singing extravaganza. I mean, that lady was so sexy, I wasn't even sure what to do with myself afterwards ...

Here's the basic plot:
Carmen is a sexy sexy factory girl/gypsy. Everybody wants her. It's not surprising why.

So she gets into a bit of a girl fight with this other factory girl and they have some good old fashion girl-on-girl cat fighting. Interested now?

So this lovely soldier Don Jose has to arrest her except Carmen does her thing and he kinda falls in love with her.

It's really too bad, because he's quite a good boy and he used to love this sweet little thing called Micaela but surprisingly he forgets all about her when Carmen does her thing. He also loves his mother, about which he sings a surprisingly disturbing and long aria. Freud would've loved it.

So Don Jose runs away with Carmen to live as a bandit in the mountains (and kids, this is why, when you want to ride off into the sunset, you better pack a lot of money with you for that rainy day). Then Escamillo, who is this super schnazzy matador and actually almost hooked up with Carmen before she left with Don Jose, appears.

 

By that point, Don Jose is uber-clingy and slightly paranoid, and Carmen dumps his ass. Now, she's quite a little player during this whole little drama, all 'I want you, no, now I don't want you, oh run away with me, no go away now' so basically, she was quite a bitch.

So it's no surprise that in typical dramatic/operatic fashion, a whole bunch of people end up dead.

Remarkably hard to tell. Now throw in some crazy gypsy dancing, some sexy handtowel washing, some more stripping and you've got Carmen! (Basically if she were here now, she'd have her own reality show on E and would be rivaling Kim K for sexy-fame and Lilo for her crazy-girl reputation).

I didn't even notice the time flying by (even though usually, 3.5 hours of sitting would have me looking at my watch every 5 minutes). By the time we left, the whole city was lit up and gorgeous, so obviously, we had to take a few photos. Or like a hundred. Camwhore for life!