Five Word Friday

How did February go so fast and now we are into March?
Friday was the first Friday of the month and as is usual, it called for a blog post, but I was so busy doing other things that I forgot, so with apologies, it’s being written on Saturday.  So my five words this month are
FIVE WORD FRIDAY ON SATURDAY

On Friday we went to Opera in the Bay to see and hear Mozart’s “ll Re Pastore”. March 1st marks the beginning of autumn here and the supposed end of this lovely summer that we have enjoyed this year.

The day dawned a bit cloudy but within a couple of hours the sun came out, the wind dropped to nothing (which you will know is almost unheard of in Windy Wellington) and the heat was on. I had never heard of this opera, and I was particularly keen to see it.  An added attraction was the fact that it was in a garden in the Bay.

We arrived at 4:00 PM as instructed and probably another hundred plus people were there as well. My friend dropped me at the door with our picnic baskets and my walking frame and went to park her car. Because we were advised we were going to sit on the grass to eat our picnic, a couple of days beforehand I had phoned the organiser to say that I would not be sitting on the grass; I could sit down but could not get up again and so I would take my walker which has a seat and was this okay. The organiser in whose home this was held, was very helpful and agreed that her son would meet us at the gate and walk us in and onto the terrace through their garage and the house.  

We walked up a very steep drive and I was happy that I was carrying nothing: the son of the house carried our picnic baskets. He took us to our reserved seats and then returned with 2 glasses of sparkling wine. The sun was really warm, and we needed the sunscreen and the hats that we’d taken.

The setup of this home is absolutely amazing. We saw only the outside with a little peak of the interior as we were taken through to our seats near where the orchestra was setting up. The large terrace on which we sat held about 50 chairs. And there were two lower terraces and then there was a large lawn on which the opera was performed. We were sitting very close to the orchestra, almost in the orchestra pit if it had been in a theatre.

There were no microphones and as we were sitting so close to the orchestra, we could hear the singing, but we couldn’t hear the words. That didn’t matter at all what we heard was the lovely music in the perfect setting.

Many people took their picnics onto the gross and we stayed where we were enjoying the birds’ song and chatting with some of the people who decided not to move either. Apart from the picnic that we had both brought, we had ordered a picnic box from an Italian restaurant. When we opened it, we saw that we did not need to have taken anything with us. There was enough for my friend to take home for lunch today.

Almost five hours later we left this magical place and the delightful people who own the property. They do this every year and I’m really glad we went this year and will be talking about it for weeks to come.

Today the weather changed.  No sun and the wind blew. How lucky we were to have chosen to go on Friday. It will be performed again tomorrow Sunday.