Museums and Opera

Today (Sunday) I am relaxing at home. I had every intention of going to church and then to the British museum, but yesterday was a busy day for me and it is raining / windy / raw today.

So what am I going to do today besides boring chores such as filing, cleaning, and laundry? NFL !!!! You read right. The NFL is playing in London today at Wembley Stadium. Saints v/s Chargers (when will the Pats be over here?). So I’ll be watching this on TV this afternoon and doing a jigsaw puzzle :)

-- Here is a clip from nfl.com about the players’ reactions to being over here (two well-spoken players)

-- This is a clip showing the NFL’s 30 year history of going overseas. Quite hilarious shots in Japan.

Yesterday (Saturday) I went to London’s Transport Museum and really enjoyed it. First though, my complaints. It is a loud museum – when I walked in, I was overwhelmed by the noises – there were speakers everywhere playing sounds of buses, subways, trains, etc. I get it. Transportation is loud. But I don’t need to be assaulted. Also, besides the children’s game of ‘find the numbers and get a stamp on your piece of paper’ game, there was no clear indication of the order in which to walk through the museum. If you did it right (i.e. followed the children’s game), you went in chronological order. Otherwise, if you just wander as I did, you go from the 1800s to the future and then work your way back through the 20th century.

What did I like about it? Well, I always like transportation stuff. The power, the purpose, the machinery. I think it’s part of the reason I so love Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. The museum is in the old Flower Market at the edge of Covent Garden and they’ve maintained the building structure and incorporated it well. The old buses and sections of train cars they have are very cool. It reminds me of the Smithsonian American History Museum in DC.

Interesting things I learned / saw : (1) almost every picture of London they had used St. Paul’s Cathedral as the center, or it would be just a map showing the train lines and the image of St. Paul’s as the one landmark. I know this is in “The City”, but a bit bizarre that say, Big Ben wasn’t used. (2) In the 1800s, if you walked 30 minutes from St. Paul’s in any direction, you were in the country (I didn’t write down specifically what year this was. Sorry.) (3) In 1801, London had nearly 1M people; a century later, 4.5M. In the 2001 census? 7.2 M. (4) The wartime section was the most interesting to me – how women became in charge of a lot of the transport, how people were warned to wear white at night and that bus drivers couldn’t even see what stop they were at because of the complete darkness as a result of turning off all lights due to possible enemy bombings. (5) The museum has its own Flickr page. The ‘mega map’ and ‘Objects’ links are very cool

Then, I took the bus over to Royal Albert Hall where I picked up my ticket for the evening’s performance of Carmina Burana. Since I had time to kill, I walked down the street to the Victoria & Albert Museum.

The V&A is a crazy place. There is just so much stuff there. It’s like a garage sale of historic stuff. I mean, do you really need to have that much of everything? And, the museum is laid out in a bizarre way. It’s almost as if they said, ‘hey, we need more space, let’s add a room here. What? Who cares if you can’t get here from the other side of the same floor and you have to go down a flight, cross to the back half of the museum, and then come back up. It’s art!’ The website seems much better. But, the museum is free and it was good to see so many people in a museum enjoying themselves. However, as I was a bit overwhelmed and over stimulated by everything inside, I only spent about 45 minutes there and then wandered until I found a place for dinner.
http://www.vam.ac.uk/

The best part of the museum was the Dale Chihuly piece hanging above the main information desk. It is huge and beautiful. I love his glass work. As a kid, my family and I went to the Cincinnati Contemporary Art Museum (now the Contemporary Arts Center) to see a showing of his work in 1992 and I’ve loved it every since. I think that is the one family, cultural outing as a child that I most vividly remember.

Yes, you have heard of Carmina Burana. It’s mainly sung in Latin, with a little Old German thrown in. I bought the program (yes, here you do not get the program for free, you have to pay 3-5 GBP for it!). In following along, my Latin was coming back to me more and more as the concert went on!

The opening and closing song / melody has been used in several commercials. Here are two – one for Gatorade (too bad it’s ruined by them using Manning and Jeter!) and one for Carlton Draught (a slight parody, quite funny).

The full lyrics are: (but the Garoade commercial starts in the middle of the second stanza and then cuts a few lines along the way)

O Fortuna
velut luna
statu variabilis,
semper crescis
aut decrescis ;
vita detestabilis
nunc obdurat
et tunc curat
ludo mentis aciem,
egestatem,
potestatem
dissolvit ut glaciem.

Sors immanis
et inanis,
rota tu volubilis,
status malus,
vana salus
semper dissolubilis

obumbrata
et velata
michi quoque niteris ;
nunc per ludum
dorsum nudum
fero tui sceleris

sors salutis
et virtutis
michi nunc contraria,
est affectus
et defectus
semper in angaria.
Hac in hora
sine mora
corde pulsum tangite ;
quod per sortem
sternit fortem,
mecum omnes plangite !


O Fortune,
like the moon
you are changeable,
ever waxing
and waning;
hateful life
first oppresses
and then soothes
as fancy takes it;
poverty
and power
it melts them like ice.

Fate – monstrous
and empty,
you whirling wheel,
you are malevolent,
well-being is vain
and always fades to nothing,

shadowed
and veiled
you plague me too;
now through the game
I bring my bare back
to your villainy.

Fate is against me
in health
and virtue,
driving on
and weighted down,
always enslaved.
So at this hour
without delay
pluck the vibrating strings;
since Fate
strikes down the strong man,
everyone weep with me!