Chile, July 2011 - #4 (Finding my inner poet in the streets of Santiago, con't)

And we're back for part 2 of this incredible week! I left off with el Parque por la Paz, which was intense, and beautiful and terribly sad. A short picnic with Deepti to digest not just our meal but what we had seen, and I was off to the apartment to change and get ready for the opera! Mauri, the other man who shares the penthouse with Nell, had mentioned that he wanted to go, and Nell worked his magic to get the tickets for free because he has a friend at the theatre, of course. Nell got all of us tickets in the orchestra of the opera at the Teatro Municipal, and each of us dressed "muy elegantes" we walked to the opera at 4:30 for the 5 p.m. show. The opera was Boris Gudunov by Modest Mussorgsky, in Russian with Spanish translation projected over the stage. Luckily I read the synopsis before going, so I had an idea of what was going on and could get more details from the translation without needing it to fully understand what they were saying. The Teatro Municipal is the nicest theatre in Santiago and the best opera in Chile. The scenery was gorgeous and the actors had beautiful voices and were great! The opera was 4 hours long, but it was so beautifully done I hardly noticed the time go by. The costumes were beautiful period outfits, big beautiful dresses and flowing capes for the men with intricate designs on them. The set was made of several different pieces, two of which had 3 spinning panels each with brick on one side and a mosaic of silver and mirrors on the other. They used the spinning panels both to change the location from the street outside to the inside of the palace, and to signify the tzar's dream state/hallucinations by spinning them for the length of his hallucination aria. The lights reflecting off the set made the whole show literally sparkle. It was beautiful!

Me and three of the other students staying at the apartment, in front of the auditorium. 

After the opera, we went out to eat at an excellent Peruvian Japanese fusion restaurant. I must say that I have generally been underwhelmed by the food in Santiago, but this restaurant was truly delicious! We got lots of sushi to share, and then Janika (another student at the house) and I got two meals to share because we both couldn't decide between them. Both were incredible! Mine was a Chilean fish (La Reina?) with grilled shrimp and a delicious sauce over slices of baked potato, and Janika got a dish that was similar to chicken fried rice, but different and much more tasty. Of course there was plenty of wine to go around, and lots of very fast Chilean Spanish that I tried my best to follow after reading 4 hours of opera translation and drinking more than a glass of wine. It was all in all a wonderful evening out on the town! I feel so lucky to have been placed here in Nell's apartment, because although I don't have to really deal with the hassles of living with a host family, I get all the benefits of having an incredibly generous and welcoming host, without whom I would not have seen half the things I've seen here in Santiago! 

On Sunday, after sleeping in to make up for our jam-packed Saturday night, Linda, Deepti, Dani (another student here) and I went to Isla Negra to see Neruda's third and last home. I didn't know when I came here that this trip would turn into a Neruda frenzy, but it has and each house has been worth it! Now I actually have to read some Neruda! His third house is on the beach in the small town of Isla Negra, about an hour and half away from Santiago (without traffic, which was not the case for us...) It's called Isla Negra because the beach has giant black rock formations and black seaweed growing all along the shore. It is an absolutely stunning location - Neruda really knew his real estate! 

 The beach directly outside of Neruda's Isla Negra house

The house in Isla Negra is the house with the most of his collections, and where he and Matilde (his wife) are buried. You can only see it by taking a tour, which we did. The tour guide was kind of blasé about everything, but I asked questions the whole time that revealed some really interesting anecdotes about Neruda and Matilde. He was certainly a character! In each house we've been told about his insistence on drinking only out of colored glasses, because wine tasted better that way. In the Isla Negra house, there is a huge collection of figure heads that he bought all around the world, including a Native American figure head from a whaling ship in Boston. The house also holds most of his collections from his travels and work as consulate to various countries, including Indonesia and Peru. Another thing Neruda loved to collect were over-sized articles that were used to advertise merchandise in stores in the early 20th century. He has more than one pair of giant shoes from in front of shoe stores, a giant clock, and the cream of the crop is the giant paper maché horse he bought from a saddle shop in the town where he grew up. He loved it so much he built a "barn" onto the house for it and had a party when he bought it. It was really fun to see all the things he collected exactly as he displayed them. I really got a sense of his personality and incredibly playful spirit, in addition to his seriousness as a poet and need to create inspirational spaces in which to work. We were not allowed to take pictures inside the house, but his obsession with sailing (although he never did go sailing by himself because he was too afraid of it) and collecting is evident outside the house as well! Staring at the ocean with all of the cool collections peeking out of the windows of the house, I could imagine writing some pretty great poetry myself.

With that I'll leave you with a fish kiss from the three of us! Neruda's symbol was a fish (I assume it has something to do with his love of the sea and sailing) and all of his houses have fish symbols everywhere. In Isla Negra, there is a large fish sculpture in the courtyard, and we couldn't resist!