40 degrees and Madama Butterfly

Seeing an opera in the Sydney opera house seemed like a thing I needed to do. 

Puccini's Madama Butterfly was playing, and I've never heard or seen it, just heard good things about it, so I got tickets with my Italian flatmate Marta, who was keen on the idea as well. And WOW! The story seems simplistic at a glance, but the experience was amazing. I was in tears several times. The singers were great, and their acting extraordinary, the acoustics awesome, and the setting of the scene was extremely beautiful. I'm running out of adjectives. All this pulled me in, and I was spellbound. Wow. It didn't hurt either, that despite our "cheap" tickets for seats where the surtitles were covered by the seats on the floor above, I was able to see the text by sitting on the floor, because the seat in front of me was empty. This might not sound so glamorous, but it was an amazing view of the entire scene, and I was very happy about the arrangement, and that the people next to the empty seat didn't move in (which I would have done). Marta of course didn't really need any subtitles since they were singing in her mother tongue... 

It was so good, that afterwards I even had trouble speaking. Then we left the opera house, and had to do some photography: 

It was a fairly warm day, especially in Epping (where I stay), which is west of the city and thus not cooled down by the Pacific as much. It was 39.9 at the time I walked to the bus, and waited for the train to head downtown, which is a new record for me. The wind was hot! (winnipeggers would probably claim that it was at least 60 due to the "windheat" :P) To me, it was exotic and wonderful, and I had my water bottle, so it didn't bother me, but apparently I have an excellent built-in cooling system compared to most people, so it probably just didn't affect me as much. As predicted, downtown was cooler, and I got a quick cockatoo sighting before heading to the opera house, which in itself would have made my day.