May Lee Meets Culture.

Last night was escapism at its best - talk about living another person's life for a couple of hours!

Last night, Ryui Bynn and I dressed up and headed off to the Toyota Classics performance by the Orchestra Citta di Firenze conducted by Lorenzo Castriota Skanderbeg and featuring tenor  Leonardo Melani. We had free tickets in hand and being classic music fans (well sort of), it only made sense to go!

At first, I was a bit doubtful of my ability to listen to classical music for like two hours at a stretch, but I had no need to worry because IT WAS SUPER EFFING AWESOMEEEEEE!

 This is a general overview sort of thing, came in the envelope with the tickets. I had no idea what we were going to attend til this arrived, so it gave us a bit of a heads-up as to what to expect. 

Hint: Night of ear-gasms.

 The programme book on the right was really informative! Are they all like that (fml, so obvious that I don't know nuts.. sigh)? It came with helpful tips for noobs like me (when to clap, continue clapping at the end of the show and there will be encores, etc), and also background information for each song. The background info really made a difference!

The songs were, in a word, fantastic.

Would it be too artsy-fartsy pseudo-connoisseur to say that it literally felt like emotions that you can feel with your ears? Who cares.. it really did. It was incredible!

At times, the hair on my arms literally stood on end, at others, I could almost FEEL the sorrow and heartbreak of the imprisoned Joan of Arc/brokenhearted courtesan/abandoned wife. I was practically clutching the arms of my seat when the man who dumped his lover was enchanted by fairies to dance to death.

And that's just the orchestra. When Leonardo Melani opened his mouth to sing, I was mesmerised. Ok, at some points the orchestra was louder than he was, but I can't understand Italian anyway, so it didn't make much of a difference to me!

Sorry, no pictures of the actual event and stuff.. I didn't want to look like a jakun, running around taking pictures of things, or worse, camwhoring. *sombong*

Ok, one more thing.

Food.

Holy mother of God.

I watched in awe as RB packed away SIX little cups of strawberry panacotta.

He's not insane, they're just insanely yummy!

The rest of the food was pretty good too *drools*

 My ticket! Hehe

Angklung Suite, mannn..

We actually reached a little bit late, we were supposed to be seated by 8.15 pm, but we reached at 8.30 sharp (it started at 8.30) and it was too late to enter the hall. The apologetic ushers told us we'd have to sit in the suite for two songs before being able to enter the hall. RB was like "waaaahhhh.. see, if you're rich, late also different story man" and I have to agree! If we were one of the ticket holders for the seats down there, we'd probably not be able to enter.. or we'd have to stand outside.. but because we were in the suite, we could watch it on TV for the duration we were stuck there. And the ushers were so apologetic! "Sorry for the inconvenience, Sir" and suchlike. I can assure you that I've never been apologised to when I was the one being late. New experience!

 Background information on the conductor and tenor! Might be a bit too small to actually read, though.

Okay, being unable to camwhore ALL NIGHT was cruel and unusual torture. So I had to take the first opportunity to do it!

I guess all I want to say is that it was an awesome night. 

Escapism at its best.

For a few hours, there were no UKM monkeys, no assignments, no exams, no nothing. Just fantastic music, fabulous food and a frickin box seat.

=)