On Culture, Class, and a non-Climactic display of fur

This week I went to an opera. Not only that, I stayed through all four hours. But the best is still to come, for the ultimate truth is, I enjoyed it. Yes. Not a teeth-clinched, “That was fun, wasn’t it?” high-pitched false enjoyment, or an introspective, think-about-how-much-we-learned enjoyment, but an authentic one. I have done what no 20-year-old has done before.

I mean, in what other supposedly stuffy art form do women don britches to portray homoerotic kings playing with swords and weeping in the moonlight? Or give ladies of the court badonkadonks that would put MTV Spring Break to shame?

And besides, the duet that closed the second act was unreal. Achingly, horrifyingly sad, for a few moments it transcended the sheer ridiculousness of the entire endeavor. The audience was captivated, holding back even their persistent coughing fits. Well, until a cell phone in the fifth row shattered the ambiance. Twice.

Even Argentine opera-goers fall from grace, apparently.

But though the entire experience clearly thrilled me, I had a few complaints. First and foremost, where was the fur? Sitting on the bus the afternoon of the show, I marveled at the veritable jungle surrounding me. Be it striped, spotted, speckled, or streaked, nearly every female over the age of 12 was enveloped in animal. Aroused from their summer hibernation, they had been prowling the streets all week, ever since the temperatures plunged toward zero. Off they went to the pharmacy, the grocery store, the gym … in this country, the creatures could be seen anywhere. Yet the one place I expected to see flocks of them in abundance, I counted exactly one. Uno.

The explanation lies in cheapness, a concept that would bristle many a porteño. For I had ended up at the rehearsal show, a terrain reserved to students, friends of the stars, and, clearly, everyone avoiding spectacle in a city addicted to flaunting its societal status though plastic surgery and family crests. For, while the avenidas echo Paris and opulent tea settings say Buckingham Palace, nothing in Buenos Aires defines Argentina’s focus on the Continent more than the Teatro Colón. The ornately carved Grecian temple flanking Nuevo de Julio declares to the world that Buenos Aires, too, is a great European city. It may not be in Europe, but that’s totally beside the point.

Now approaching its centennial, the gem of Buenos Aires holds within its walls many of a story reflective of the country's complex relations between politics, culture, and class. Within its walls, which are now closed for renovation, Evita sparked a mass protest of the city’s moneyed, anti-Peronist elite. The presence of the glamorous radio star waving from the president’s balcony was too much for many attendees, who felt passionately that the opera was no place for those born into families without an estancia, or at least a few trust funds. So, as the story goes, the haughty porteñas defied her en masse, sending their maids in place of themselves. The furs got an evening off, and they got their message across in a way that promoted a mature, sensitive dialogue.

My own opera experience was slightly less controversial, in a theater a few blocks from the legendary Colón. But luckily, I can squint as I walk down the street, and the looming buildings transform into gold-trimmed balconies, the cacophony of brakes and candied peanut-sellers form a symphony, and the fur all around me transports me to the opera — with appropriately dressed clientèle.