A night at the Opera — An Elegant Sufficiency

Our tour of the Operahouse in the Summer had kindled our wish to come to a performance here and at the same time as we booked our flights and hotel accommodation, we also reserved seats for this evening’s performance of Orpheus in the Underworld.

The Nordic light suggested it was later than just gone 3 when we set off to walk over there from the hotel. With an early start of 6pm for the evening performance, we juggled times and availability for a table in Havsmak, one of the opera restaurants for a pre-show dinner.

A little game of ice hockey was ongoing on the frozen pond and a couple of youngsters were just putting on their skates to have some fun there too. We stayed safely on the pathway!

I whispered another apology to Kristen Flagstad for calling her a fishwife before and we joined the little parade of people heading over the bridge.

The light really was magnificent though the glass sculpture She lies in the fjord somehow lacked the sparkle and personality it has in the bright sunshine.

Once inside, we had time to wander around an appreciate the seasonal decorations before our table was ready.

We sent an idea for an alternative Christmas tree to our dancer friend too!

Making our way to our table in Havsmak (great name, isn’t it?) we noted the chairs here. Stick around for a while and in a few posts I’ll explain the significance of that :-)

Though we’d allowed plenty of time (we thought) our waiter advised that the 7-course menu would be pushing it a little, so we ordered the three course and looked forward to having time to savour it.

Savour it we did - three delicious courses each with a Nordic flavour. Is it dill? Fennel? ginger?

But yes, time we were moving and getting ourselves sorted out for the show. Once again, our coats had reserved spots in the cloakroom (love it!)

The auditorium was filling up as we made our way to our places in the first balcony.

Great seats with an excellent view of the stage too.

And what of the opera itself?

Well, at it’s best, it’s a silly story and this was certainly played for fun in very Scandinavian style. This was almost pantomime really…except we missed out on so many of the jokes because they were too quick for the subtitles and we don’t speak Norwegian!

So, whilst it wasn’t an all-time favourite performance, it was a grand night out and most certainly one to remember, if only for the sheep… (don’t ask)