The Night of Two Halves

This week we could have had two more different consecutive nights out.

On Thursday night we went to the opening night of the opera Eugene Onegin. The first time either us had ever been to an opera, which to be honest, was only because we won tickets through a competition in the Listener (which we subsequently found out were worth $150 each!). The opera is based upon the novel of the same name by the Russian author Alexander Pushkin. The follows the title character, a young aristocrat in the 1820s whose friend (Lensky) introduces him to the idealistic Tatyana, who subsequently pronounces her love for him. He rebukes her love and then soon after in a ball gets in a quarrel with his friend, with Lensky challenging Onegin to a foolish duel. The duel ends with Onegin killing his one and only friend. The last Act is several years later, when Onegin meets Tatyana again, who is now married to a Prince and has developed into a sophisticated Princess. Onegin realises he is now in love with the girl he rebuke long ago and pleads his love to Tatyana. Showing up Onegin's emotional and moral inferiority, the story finishes with Tatyana's rebuke of Onegin's love.

So how was three and a half hours of Opera? It was a lot of Opera! And we were certainly in the minority in the crowd under 50 (and I was the only person I saw wearing trainers). We did enjoy it, though trying to concentrate on the performances and read the sub-titles (it is in Russian) isn't easy. Some of the longer scenes were tiring, but the ball and duel scenes were fun. Not sure I will be rushing back to the next opera, but it was a good experience all the same.

Our Friday night couldn't be in greater contrast. We attended the charity event - Fight 2 Survive - which involved 14 colleagues from ANZ who were stepping into the boxing ring for the first (and probably last) time. The charity was Child Cancer, and these 14 brave souls had been receiving training for the past 3 months, though prior to that had no boxing experience. It was great fun - watching from ringside! The fights themselves were three 2-minute rounds, which you could tell was more than enough by the end. Each gave it their all, and it was fun watching them grapple between what they had been trained to do and their natural instincts to throw wild punches. But there was no holding back in the ring, a little bit of blood and one fight which was stopped early. The whole night was professionally run, Shane Cameron even turned up halfway through to say a few words. In all, $70,000 was raised, which is a pretty amazing feat. As someone who has never thrown a punch in their life, I could only respect what these guys had done.