Ballet

For my 17th birthday I got a ballet ticket from my hostfamily.

Yesterday, on the 20th of january, we went to the Rīga Opera to see the piece "Raimonda".

Rīga Opera is very a very glamorous building from the outside, but even more glamorous from the inside.

"Raimonda" is a classical ballet which takes place in the middle age, and it's with knights and a king, a queen and a princess, but also with some oriental characters.

The main story is the following:

One guy falls in love with a girl, Raimonda. When I interpreted right, she's the princess. They dance together, and he gives her a white scarf. She's dancing with that scarf alone, until one oriental (rich looking) guy appears with his fighters, dances around her, and finally steals it. Then he disappears. Raimonda goes back to her prince, and they dance together again. After some more dancing, the scarf falls from the sky, and Raimonda gets is back. After that, the guy who fell in love with Raimonda becomes a knight (the king gives him a sword). Then, the oriental guy comes with a lot more oriental people, they show a lot cool performances, and Raimonda comes to his side. Then the new knight comes, and wants to fight in a duell against the oriental guy. The king starts the duell, and after some fighting, the prince hits the oriental guy in the face. He goes back to his guys, removes what he was wearing over his head and there's a big wound. With his last power, he walks to Raimonda, who  changed the sides again and is standing besides the knight. He reaches his arm for her, but she refuses him, and he dies in front of her feet. In the last scene, Raimonda marries the knight and puts a crown on his head, so he's the prince now.

I really liked that ballet, the dances were amazing. I personally really really liked the oriental costumes.
The only critique which I can mention is that the whole piece is a bit to much a klischee.
It would have been a lot cooler, if the oriental guy would have gotten then girl, he was a way more interesting character, and also then the end would've been more surprising.
But still, I really enjoyed watching this ballet.

All the photos which I'm going to add to this post (except for the three photos of the opera hall in the end) weren't taken by me. I found them on the internet, because photographing wasn't allowed during the ballet, and also my camera wouldn't be that good.
That fact means that the people which you see on the photos probably aren't the same I saw in the ballet yesterday. But still I thought it would be cool to add some photos.
If you're interested in a more detailed version of the story (and maybe I also made some mistakes telling it) or you want to see more pictures, just google "Raymonda ballet" or "Raimonda balets".

Have a nice day!