Power of Puccini

Sunday afternoon my mom and I checked out the new Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center (CEPAC). After two years of building, the $145 million center opened on September 15.

Upon walking through the doors of the center, you are greeted by a silvered mural, "The Nine Muses." And for those who saw and loved the Dale Chihuly exhibit at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens as much as I did will love the ten 600-pound gold and glass chandeliers he inspired.

The John A. Williams theater, designed to meet the highest acoustic and amplified performances, seats 2,750. The inside of the theater is beautiful and modern with clean lines, yet still captures a vintage theater look with rich reds meeting radiant design.

The Atlanta Opera is the first company to call the CEPAC home. This was apparently a stellar move for them, because it was announced before the show that AO ticket sales have already gone up 82 percent since last year!

The first opera performed was Puccini's "Turandot." Amazing doesn't begin to describe it. Although it wasn't the first burst of applause, the set even evoked spontaneous clapping from the audience. And before the royal purple curtain pulled back, the conductor signaled the snare drummer to roll. I thought maybe it was the beginning of the opera-a sort of prelude. However, it was the beginning of the national anthem...to which everyone sang along! I believe I may have even been sitting by a former opera singer, or opera hopeful with a great range.

So the set was phenomenal, the costumes were gorgeous (and had to be hottt), and the singing was magnificent. This was my first real opera, because even though "Phantom of the Opera" is great, I don't think it counts here. I was going in a little nervous, thinking of Richard Gear in Pretty Woman telling Julia Robert's character that you either love it or hate it.

I love it! Objectively, it was three hours of singing only, and reading subtitles. But there in my red-cushioned seat (sitting next to an actual Italian whom I received travel tips from) I fell in love with opera. I felt happy, sad, scared and sympathetic and every once in a while goose bumps would trail up my arm. It probably helps that I was really looking forward to the first song of the third act (it's ok, we got two intermissions)--Nessun Dorma. A clip from an audition for the 2007 winner of Britain's Got Talent shows how popular this aria still is today. Not to mention how it was made famous in the fall of 2003 by the Southerners: click here and look under music sampler for 2003 Nessun Dorma.

There is so much more to say, but I won't bore anyone further with the injustice of describing my first opera experience in words, when it was really something only to be truly known by experiencing that very moment.

After the finale, the last song really came: a percussion of clapping hands and seats flying up continued for at least a solid five minutes.