[ Sept.2018 ] We arrived at the National Opera Theatre in Kiev in Ukraine, which was the destination of our walking tour on the day.
This
theatre was completed in 1901.
Before that there was another theatre in a different place, but just around the time that they needed to renovate it, it was burnt down in 1896, so this one was built instead.
At the centre of the building there is a huge head.
This is a poet called Taras Shevchenko, who contributed a lot to the cultural history of this country, but not related to the ballet or opera, according to our guide, Miloslava.
Here, we left Miloslava and entered the theatre with our Ukrainian friend, Alina.
We saw the ballet, ‘Romeo and Juliet’.
This was our second time to see the ballet here in this theatre.
I did not remember the entrance area, but when I saw the ceiling, I remembered it.
One of the features of this theatre is the arm chairs and they were chosen in consideration of the acoustics, Miloslava had told us.
This production of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ was choreographed by Anatoly Shekera, who was not familiar to me, so at first I did not get
hooked, but gradually I got into it.
There were fewer performers in this performance than in the productions I am familiar with, for example, the one in the Royal Opera House in London.
I think I saw a blond Juliet for the first time here this time.
We bought a programme, though we knew that we could not read it, and it cost only 30 Hryvnia (£0.82, €0.94, $1.07) .
When we opened it, there were some scrawls in pencil, so we thought it was sold by mistake and took it back to the vendor.
But apparently, it was written intentionally.
The ticks were showing the dancers who danced on that night and also, some names of dancers were written that were not printed originally because they were substitutes.
I have never seen any programmes with a human touch like this.
Another thing I was surprised at was the toilets in the theatre.
There were many toilets, but a half of them were squat toilets.
It may be that the squat toilets are still mainstream in some parts of world, I wondered.
After
all, I was moved by this ballet performance and after that, we walked a bit to the restaurant that Alina had booked.
It was a pretty restaurant called Korchima Taras Bulba (Korchima means a pub, apparently) with an ethnic style.
We tasted 5 different Nalivka, an alcohol drink like vodka – straight, with blueberry, with cranberry, with some spices and surprisingly, with horseradish) and we shared Krovyanka (very similar to Black pudding), Deruny (potato pancake), salads and so on.
Some
foods are very unusual for us and most were very tasty, but it was too much for us to finish it all.
Alina told us that in Ukraine as well as in Georgia, Tamada, the toast master is very important.
When Tamada call out “Budmo!”, people respond, “Hay!” and drink a glass without pausing.
It became late and the restaurant started getting ready to close, so we could not look around the place thoroughly, but it was an interesting place, which includes corner where you can try on some costumes.
