An Artsy Fartsy Week in Milano

This past week, my study abroad program IES gave us tickets to go see the ballet "Onegin" at La Scala! Big deal since La Scala is this super famous, beautiful, and historical opera house in the center of Milano. Since opera isn't so much thing, I hadn't planned on even walking into this prestigious place of performance. I don't think I would ever go out of my way to pay for tickets to the opera, even at La Scala. But a ballet, I was totally up for this ballet with music by Tchaichovsky. And boy was I in luck, this ballet even has a gun shot!!! It was all about revenge and love and stealing women's hearts and the like. I liked it, I loved watching the dancing...I haven't watched dancing in so long. I used to watch dancing all the time, at least three times a week, in person. Even if the music and style and level of competancy was on a totally different end of the spectrum. Of course me being me I couldn't stop thinking about when the dancers last injured themselves and if they were dancing on injuries and what countries they were from and how many times they had danced that ballet and how long they studied ballet and the competition to get to perform in La Scala. Then I started thinking about ballet as a possible epitome for all things graceful, delicate, and cultured. But this is only one perspective on all these traits, how Western civilization dictates what is considered good and bad, classy and trashy, through out most of the world. And then I started thinking about how based in Western civilization my education in the humanities is. Art history and all the Jesus and Mary's, all the literature and poetry I study written by Americans and Europeans...it just all seems like one piece of the pie that too much of the world eats from. I want another perspective. I am prisoner to ideals and values and to the making of Western civilization's history. I'm not sure this is what I want. Anyways, here is a picture of me and my friend inside La Scala.

Then on Wednesday I went to the Castello Sforza with my Renaissance art history class to look at a ceiling painted by Leonardo da Vinci for the Sfroza family. No one really knows exactly what the room was used for since the French came in shortly after and painted over it and the room probably wasn't used for whatever its purpose was for very long. Then we saw a sculputre by Michaelanglo of Mary and Jesus which is this really cool sculputre where Mary has a face and a half and her leg is showing in what would be considered a scandalous way and it almost looks like Jesus is holding her up instead of Mary carrying Jesus. All very interesting. This is the kind of art history class I came to Italy to take...best field studies ever.

On Friday, it was my RA and my roommate's birthdays so we had a short celebratory lunch before my RA went home to Verona and my roommate took off for her weekend trip. Then my other flatmate and I went to the Piazza Reale to see an exhibit on Dali. This exhibit was interesting and definately included work spanning many decades. We saw the lips couch and the statue with the fur on it and one of his videos in addition to many paintings. Dali isn't my favorite and the exhibit was very stylistic, fitting for an exhibit on Dali I suppose, but I'm very glad I went.