Blague #25: Opera’s and Opportunities!

Campbell Brown

Monday, June 10th

Today marked the beginning of our final week in Prague, and to celebrate, our amazing teachers canceled class. For me, the morning was spent sleeping in and recuperating after a long weekend of traveling to Poland, Vienna, and Terezín. After catching up on sleep, most of my classmates and I, those in the Art of Estrangement class, worked on finalizing our photographic short stories since they were due at 5 PM.

The photographic short story assignment was as follows:

Each student will create a short film through photographic sequencing and voice overlay, following the legendary example of Marker’s La Jetée. Here, the goal is to embrace narrative storytelling through an experimental form, which further illustrates our emphasis on the familiar, the strange, and the uncanny.

The overall consensus of the class was that the project challenged and encouraged us to push our creative boundaries not only through writing but visually as well. Personally, I enjoyed the writing and script component of the project but had difficulty translating my story into a visual work.

Following the submission of our projects, my friends and I decided to celebrate at one of our most frequented cafés. Caffé Milani is around five minutes from CET and has a multitude of lunch options such as sandwiches, burgers, pastas, cheeses, soups, and pizzas. I ordered the daily soup (which ended up being tomato!), spaghetti carbonara (per usual), and a Pepsi (I’m a Coke girl, but I settled).

After lunch, my friends and I hurried back to the apartment to get ready for the opera. My apartment has become somewhat of a safe space for Lizzie, Madison, and I. In a foreign country where most things feel unfamiliar and strange, our space is filled with the familiar. Shoving around the same mirror to put on makeup, raiding each other's closets, and singing Taylor Swift at an American noise level are moments that will be constant wherever we go. After getting ready, we sprinted, as much as we could wearing heels and running on cobblestones, to the tram and ended up in Old Town Square at the Estates Theatre.

The Estates Theatre was beautiful, five floors tall, with golden flourishes and a luxurious central chandelier. This was the first time I had been to the opera and was pleasantly surprised at the humor and plot involved. I had presumed that we were going to be watching someone stand in the middle of the stage and just sing for three hours, but I was surprisingly hooked. Unfortunately, it was sung in Czech, but they had English subtitles on a large TV screen so that we could understand. The opera we saw was called “Ariadne auf Naxos.” Here is the link to a quick and easy synopsis read if you're interested: Ariadne auf Naxos Synopsis 

Finally, my friends and I ended the night with ice cream from Creme de la Creme, a chain of ice cream stores that, in my opinion, have the best ice cream in Prague. We also hit a couple of souvenir shops on the way. I was surprised at how vibrant and energized the city felt at night. The atmosphere was something I had never seen before, and it was amazing to have experienced it.

Following our ice cream excursion, we made a quick run to McDonald's for a late-night snack since it was around midnight at this point and found more of our fellow classmates already there! Ending the night, we all crowded into a more private room of the biggest McDonald's I have ever seen and swapped stories of our experiences throughout this trip and memories from past years in college.

I could not be more grateful for this experience and that I get to share it with such wonderful people. Thank you, Prague and HPU Honors Program, for allowing me the privilege to grow and learn in such a wonderful city.

Here’s to our last week in Prague!