Honduran Opera

This Friday, our North American Community Coordinator (NACC) announced that someone had donated a set of 25 free tickets to see the Honduran Opera for any N. American teacher that wanted to go. I learned this information too late to make the 25, but added my name as ticket #26 just in case. Some other teachers followed suit, and added their names after mine.

Friday afternoon arrived and the NACC sent word that the school had extra tickets. Everyone who signed up could go! I was ecstatic-looking forward to my first time at an opera and a different kind of cultural experience. Five-thirty rolled around and the IST bus came to pick us up. Everyone was dressed to the nines and we complimented each other on looking fantastic.

The opera house is located in a different part of El Centro (downtown) that I'd never been to, and it was an interesting ride seeing this part of town at night. Our bus flew down the narrow, pothole filled streets, and we passed many people standing on the curb, waiting for collectivos to bring them home from work, 4 people at a time.

The opera house was smaller than I imagined it to be, after having seen Opera houses in Italy and the U.S., but elegant nonetheless. Composed of a slanted main floor with a balcony above, the opera house was a cozy contrast to the three-tiered performance centers where you are one in a thousand people. Our tickets allowed us to sit anywhere, so I sat with some other teachers in the red, velvet chairs in the balcony. We felt important and had a great view of the orchestra, singers, Italian town backdrop, and the audience below and across. Before the opera began another teacher and I puzzled through the English synopsis of the play, trying to identify the characters and the basic points of the plot. I never realized how baffling Italian operas could be.

As the orchestra began its first notes, we quickly realized that this was not the full opera performance-but a dress rehearsal with snippets of songs from the actual opera. Nonetheless, the singers' voices blew me away. The musical range and amount of projection they were able to express seemed impossible for the human voice. Let's just say our operatic impersonations did not even come close.



The opera-rehearsal lasted maybe an hour, complete with a 15 minute intermission in the middle, where we could walk around the house and explore its hidden treasures, like the series of windows/doors that opened up to balconies with beautiful views of the city lights and even Picacho (the Jesus statue). Afterwards, we mingled in the "ballroom" and enjoyed free samples of Honduran wine. It was an evening to remember!