Humor at the Met

Check out the "Ask Figaro" section of the Met. It has a couple of questions that answer some of the wardrobe and appropriate behaviour queries I addressed in my "How to attend a concert" post. But this Q&A had me in stitches:

via Metropolitan Opera

Q.

Pagliacci is one of my favorite operas, and I plan to see it at the Met this season. One thing about it confuses me, though: Tonio bangs his drum and invites the villagers to the show “a ventitre ore.” He even repeats this a few times, and on high notes, so I know it’s important. Now, I know that translates as “23 hours.” I also know that 23 hours means 11 P.M. Wasn’t that a little late for a clown show to begin? Shouldn’t the kids have been in bed by then?

A.

If that’s the most perplexing question you have about Italian opera, you’re in pretty good shape. A show might well start at 11 P.M. in Madrid, but in rural Calabria? Before electricity? As it turns out, many places in Italy marked time the old-fashioned way until clocks were standardized in the 20th century.

And by “old-fashioned,” I mean biblically old-fashioned, as in starting the clock at sunset. “Ventitre ore,” therefore, meant an hour before sunset – a perfectly respectable time for the kids to come to the show and witness a double murder.

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