Perth Festival runs from February 7th to March 1st. This is not to be confused with the Fringe Festival which I've already written about, although they are very similar, and everyone thinks they're the same thing anyways. Basically, it's a bunch of art performances and exhibitions throughout the city. These past two Saturdays, I took advantage and went to two picnic-worthy performances out on my "lawn", aka the park on the other side of my block.
The first was Veles e Vents. Based on that name, I (or anyone) didn't know what to expect. It was advertised as "Festival Spectacular" that would set the skyline alight for three nights to open the festival. Cool. Perth knows how to do fireworks, so it must be cool. (All these fireworks are despite the complete fire/open flame ban and bushfires all over this place. I don't get it.) Amanda and I got our Japanese food, set up our picnic, and got ready to figure out what Veles e Vents was all about. Forty-five minutes later, eyes wide, mouths open, we looked at each other after the final firework, and still didn't know what it was about.
Summary: People put together a sailing ship to foreign music with something that sounds like a bagpipe but is not. These weird sea monster-y things dance across the "stage". A storm or some other type of catastrophe and turns the ship into a steam boat or something industrial revolution-y. There's this weird worm thing that dances around on the boat. Darth Vader appears as a light projection on one of the nearby apartment buildings (and remains there for the rest of the show). One of the people has some struggle (I'm pretty sure he hangs himself), and then rides across the "stage" on some flaming creature. All of this is punctuated with pretty neat fireworks.
Looking at the
website, it was some type of environmental message, but that missed me. The kids all around us seemed to really like it though.
The second was Opera in the park. Despite having played many orchestral pieces from operas, I have never actually seen one live. As part of the festival, the West Australian Opera and West Australian Symphony Orchestra put on Pucinni's Tosca. Even though it was in Italian, there were clearly visible subtitles that helped us to avoid the catastrophe of the previous show: befuddlement. We packed our picnic and wine and headed to the park over an hour early, only to find it was already packed (I must say with a slightly older demographic than Veles e Vents, but still plenty of children roaming around.)
Summary: Artist paints a picture of a woman who is NOT his lover. His lover, Tosca, gets jealous. They sing and make up. Artist decides to help an escaped criminal. Evil cop plays on Tosca's jealousy to try and find the prisoner. Tosca's jealousy disappears, and after she sells herself to the Evil Cop to save her Artist (through a fake execution), she stabs the Evil Cop. The fake execution turns out to be real, so she commits suicide as well. Everyone ends up dead.
It sounds a lot better in Italian.
After two fairly cultural weekends, I think I may be ready for a modern romantic comedy. Although I hear there are these Mermaids in a tank that tell jokes I may need to check out before the festival is over...
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