Miguel's Teaching and Travel blog; Russia, Morocco, Senegal

A Community College professor's experiences serving as a Fulbright Scholar at the Stolypin Volga Region Institute of Administration in Saratov Russia in 2014 and as a Fulbright/Hays grantee in Senegal, West Africa in 2016; Includes a 2nd and 3rd trip in 2015 and 2017 to Saratov, and, in 2015, as part of a delegation to Morocco's Ministry of Education. Continues with an additional trip to Senegal(CAORC) in 2019 and a study abroad summer program at the University of Nicosia, Cyprus in 2019.

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Russian Opera House

Russian Opera, Saratov, Pushkin's "The Mermaid"

The office bought opera tickets for me Saturday night. I met Courtney(An American English teacher here on a Fulbright---a wonderful, brave young woman from upstate New York who is in the International office here for a year) and Valentina from the office outside the opera house around 5:45. We had awesome seats. The opera house is a work of art....beautiful.
It was a full production, with an orchestra, and was very entertaining. Very high quality. The story was begun by Pushkin and finished by Alexander Dargomyzhky.

Valia patiently explained the plot to Courtney and I before the show began.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusalka_(Dargomyzhsky)

Very tragic. In the end a little girl leads her father to drown in a river. Very Russian.

In a twist, one of the male leads was the same guy I saw last year perform Sinatra songs(with my friends Stepan, Kamiel, and Maxim). He still had a mullet to die for, but was a superb tenor.

Photos to follow.