Recovering from Rome is hard. School work stacks up, even when it’s a school trip; the nights are all full of activities; the hours of missed sleep never return. This week was the perfect example of why I won’t recover until I graduate in December. We returned from Rome on Sunday evening and I immediately went to work typing about the trip and starting to read for my classes. Monday night the TCU group went out and we celebrated my birthday. It was a fun time and Kristina made two types of cake and we had gelato on top. It was SO good!
Last night was the opera. I’d been to operas before, but never an allegorical one. The cast did Verdi’s “I Lombardi alla Prima Crociata.” The plot is about a family ripped with inner strife and plotting. In the plot the daughter is captured by the Muslims and she falls in love with the prince, only to have her family come after them in the crusades and completely massacre her lover and his group. In the end she is reconciled with her family after one of them baptizes her lover right before he dies and then the one who baptized him is also killed. It’s a strange plot that borders on the story of the patriarch Jacob’s family and the plight of his daughter Dinah. At other points it resembles a Shakespearean tragedy.
What was the most interesting is that they adapted it to be a modern political allegory. The family and their troops on the crusade had uniforms closely resembling the United States Army and the muslims were wearing clothes similar to Iraqis. Also, at one point when the daughter was berating her family they showed the horrors that the army had carried out – mirroring the shooting of innocent civilians and the embarrassment of Abu Ghraib. The allegory was obvious and the music was great. The jewel is that in the end the lover comes back in a vision to the daughter and he’s wearing a white suit and they sing a great duet of cosmic reconciliation. Better yet, in the end the family reconnects and ends its internal strife. Perhaps that’s an even better allegory: after all of the bloodshed, all of the embarrassment, all of the hate – reconciliation can happen for those who work for it.
On a lighter note: I’m taking cooking classes! The Accent Center hooked some of us up with the Apicius Culinary Institute of Florence. The 20 of us taking the class all gather and they have a chef and two assistants who teach us how to make complete meals. We each have our own workstation and full setup. Tonight I made spinach and cheese-filled ravioli starting out with just eggs and flour. 
I already know several things that I’m going to need for my kitchen once I get my own apartment. Other members of the group made a great bruschetta (toast with a sweet tomato/garlic/basil topping) and others made homemade tiramasu with quite a bit of rum. Next Wednesday we have another lesson. What’s best is that one of the assistants also teaches at his home on Saturdays. There are several of us who will probably do that for a couple of weeks whenever we’re in town.
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