When I first was to the Royal Opera House in London, I saw "Aida", an Italian opera in a Chinese setting and settled in Egypt. As a Romanian, I found very interesting and funny the multinational Anglo-Italian-Chinese-Egyptian-Romanian "coloratura" and I remembered it when I saw at Hedehusene, a small village near Copenhagen, in Denmark, "Troubadour" by Verdi, dressed in Japanese clothes, plot settled in Spain, a Danish-Italian-Japanese-Spanish-Romanian multinational, all seen through the eyes of a Romanian. :-)

The same situation happened accidentally in Cornwall, England, when a train was late and because of that, I was about to miss the show. Initially, the Danish railways (DSB) conductor, said she couldn`t do anything, but later, perhaps after checking the information I gave her (it wasn`t late that train, but a previous one) she got the approval that my taxi from the nearest train station, Roskilde, to Hedehusene to be paid by the railways company!!

Arriving much earlier there, I could notice what was happening before the show... Opera took place outdoors in a circular place where they had dug rows (for chair) in the hills. Danes came few hours earlier with their cars, motorcycles or bicycles and have a picnic, enjoying leisurely one of relatively few summer days in this part of Europe. When it was almost showtime, they collected everything meticulously in their baskets, bags, backpacks, put them in their cars or take them with them if they didn`t have cars and went to the show. Although I looked specifically, I couldn`t find the slightest trace of garbage left behind by Danes, not even a paper or an apple core...

A helicopter passed above and those who also attended last year immediately thought of the helicopter that in "Madama Butterfly" from precedent year, had represented Pinkerton`s ship entering port.

The show started when it was still daylight. And a little cold, although it was the first day of August, cold that intensified later... no problem, Danes had warm clothes and even blankets and I had my trolley with everything I needed against wind, rain, snow, solar eclipse. :-)

Four pairs of two soldiers each climbed the stairs silently among viewers, turned around and got down the same stairs. Once back on the scene, the music began. Their costumes were strange, they didn`t really look like medieval Spanish soldiers. Long dark yellow skirts, armor from the waist up, metal helmet with a red feather and kind of black boots in their feet. The confirmation came with Leonora and her maid, both dressed in the purest Japanese style, in kimonos. Once again, I thought about last year and "Madama Butterfly", whose plot took place in the Land of the Rising Sun... Clearly, there was a Danish-Japanese conspiracy here at Hedehusene! :-)

Two geese flied over the scene when Ferrando was telling that a gypsy burned at the stake had turned into an owl. I want to believe that it wasn`t directed, but pure coincidence, otherwise I would be tempted to believe that in Japan owls look like geese. :-)

The scene, rotary (alias modular), was a huge circle colored in the traditional Japanese sign, Yin-Yang, "there is something bad in any good, there is something good in any bad ". The colorization was not clear, linear, but blurred, only after several minutes did I notice the great Japanese symbol.

The scenery was rather simplistic, there were only two parallelepiped wooden structures on stage and... that`s all. Their twirling (stage included) didn`t overrule the impression, nor did it make any sense. It got a little better when, at "Gypsy Choir", two metal objects were tied with strings to the structures, one in the shape of the sun, the other resembling the moon and hammers gave rhythm to the aria.

Interesting elements of behavior, the soldiers mowed down when Ferrando started to talk about the ghost that was haunting the castle, then a suite of 7-8 riders crossed behind scene when Manrico went to rescue Azucena from Count de Luna`s clutches. Soldiers made geometric figures at the beginning of the third act, when they sang "Squilli, Echeggi La Tomba Guerrieri", the choir in which they described how they would fight and fall their enemies on their swords. The climax was reiterating the end of the aria "Di Quella pira" with a group of riders circling the lake and only they being lighted (night had already fallen). It followed the chorus from "Miserere", placed above the orchestra, people in black appearing in dark... there could not be a more appropriate effect for the significance of the moment.

Overall, a nice show with good voices - given the large space, I do not regard a defect that they were amplified by speakers, else I do not know how much we could have heard - but the scenery was rather simplistic and perhaps a little strange - and there were not too many special effects. I did not initially understand why there were Japanese costumes, nor the symbolism, but later I found out that the director was Japanese. This is an excuse:-), but on the other hand, I have always thought about how "Aida" or "Nabucco" would look like in Romanian folk costumes or Daco-Roman costumes... Is there any Romanian director to steal my idea? ;-)

(Article translated by Cornelia Iordache)

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