Monday October 14 2013

There are lessons everywhere.  There is, I assume, one or more of life’s nasty lessons around the topics of greed and loyalty waiting for me when I get home to Midden Harbour  But in the meantime, I have been fortunate enough to glean a set of uplifting ones here in Budapest.

The first is about expectations.  Went to a performance of Verdi’s La Traviata My expectations were not high.  Having paid the equivalent of $2.50 online including processing fee for a ticket I had no illusions about what I would encounter.  At that price, a high school production with cardboard sets in a church basement would have been a bargain.  As it turned out, the venue was the Hungarian State Opera House which is a spectacular 19^th century building of stone, frescos and fluted columns.  As you might imagine, the seats were not luxurious, but rather in what we would term the “Nose bleed” section tucked under the edges of the ceiling with a limited view of half of the stage. 

But what I did have was a bird’s eye view of the magnificent chandelier that dangles from the building’s central  dome, an up close and personal perspective on the hand-painted ceiling, and, thanks to binoculars, a swell view of the diva’s cleavage—men are teenaged boys all their lives--denied those on the orchestra level.   

Then there was the sound.  Regardless of where you sit in an edifice like this—this is not some part time hockey arena with the acoustics of a quanset hut—you can hear everything.  It was an afternoon to remember.   The voices and instruments were magical, a treat for everyone in the building, even those of us who had to enter through a back door and climb a set of well-worn stone steps whose treads had been patched with an indifferent pastiche of available rock over the years.

And this brings me to my second lesson which was about equality.  Certainly, my $2.50 ticket did not gain me access to the kind of comfort enjoyed by those at the more prestigious levels.  But it did give me and all those around me access to the same sights and sounds as those below.  The patrons with whom I shared this lofty perch included the elderly, who had initiated their assault on the three flights of stairs as soon as the doors opened and managed to gain their seats just before the curtain rose.  And there were families, young working class couples with grade school aged children—boys in pressed pants and tidy shirts, girls in pretty dresses and bows in their hair—who seemed not to mind an afternoon with their mothers and fathers, away from video games and cell phones. This could never happen in the city at home because the majority of young couples there could never afford tickets to a concert for the family.  But they can here.

My experience included one other example of the importance Hungarians seem to place on making this experience accessible to all.  During the intermissions, in the dazzling mahogany and marble bar room, people openly took from their pockets and purses brown bags containing sandwiches and containers of wine, and enjoyed their refreshments.  Instead of having to buy $8 beer or a $12 cold hamburger, they were free to BYOV—Bring Your Own Vittles.

Imagine that.