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I visited Národní Divadlo (the National Theater) to go to the opera, so now it was time to visit Státní Opera (the State Opera) to go the ballet. (To make this come full circle, I’d need to attend a play at the National Ballet, but, alas, there is no such theater. The National Ballet also performs at Národní Divadlo).

I went to see Phantom of the Opera, which recently premiered and which is billed as a "dancing horror love story". It follows the basic story line so familiar from Gaston Leroux’s original story and all the many dramatizations that have followed, except that, suitably enough, Christina is now a dancer, and the Phantom has composed a ballet to showcase her talents. (But so why, then, did they not call it Phantom of the Ballet?) The guiding force behind this production was Libor Vaculík.

I was reasonably pleased by the ballet. The music didn’t particularly impress me (and a few passages put me strongly in mind of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber!), and while the dancing was of a fine calibre, the choreography emphasized more telling the story than dancing. I would very much more like to see how the company can dance than how it can act. They did manage to introduce a welcome note of humor into the drama, and I have no complaint with the dancers.

The theater itself is an exquisite little jewel box, and I look forward to returning. With both Státní Opera and Národní Divadlo, my mental standard for comparison is the San Francisco Opera House, which is downright cavernous by comparison. These theaters are much more intimate, and I don’t think that there can be a bad seat in the house.

The day was really quite nice: it’s a pity that I couldn’t have gone to the ballet yesterday and had today for my trip to Kŕivoklát!

Once again, I turned to my handy little guidebook for ideas on where to go outside of Prague, and this time I settled on Křivoklát. Its appeal is that it was described as a sort of "living museum of medieval life and crafts". Reportedly, there are resident artists and craftsmen whose products are for sale.

To get there, I took the train to Beroun, then transferred to the train for Křivoklát. The train to Beroun is the one also taken by visitors to Karlštejn, so the train nearly completely emptied out there.

Křivoklát started as a hunting lodge before being converted into a more defensible structure, so it’s considerably less ornate than many other Czech castles. As seen from the train station:

And the view from an adjoining hillside:

Perhaps because it was a weekend, I don’t know that I saw any of the reputed resident artists or craftsmen. Their works, though, were indeed available for sale, and while there wasn’t a whole lot, what there was was varied and much more interesting than the usual tourist fare. There was wood work and metal work, fabrics, paintings, products made with honey and with bees’ wax.

There weren’t many people about at all; that it was pouring rain probably had something to do with that! The inner courtyard:

There was one couple who were getting married at the castle, although from what little I could see of the room reserved for that purpose, it hardly seemed a romantic setting. And after the wedding, the wedding party turned out in the courtyard for pictures, with umbrellas overhead and the poor bride trying to keep the hem of her white gown out of the mud.

At this time of year, there was no English-language tour of the interior available; instead, I was given a folder with the text of the tour and sent off to join the Czech tour. The covers were color-coded, so I could tell that there were two other English-speaking couples and one German couple. The interior was not particularly noteworthy, although there was a very nice chapel. There is also a dungeon with an impressive display of torture equipment.

The countryside is lovely, and it would be worth coming back just to wander in the hills:

I had time to kill before the train came, so I hiked around a little, but the persistent rain (oh, and I was umbrella-less) discouraged me from going too far.

Since I cited Tom Lehrer in my post about clubbing carp for Christmas, I thought it was appropriate to highlight Google’s tribute, on the occasion of his 80th birthday.

(Belated) Happy Birthday!

I haven’t been out of town for a couple of months, not since my January trip to the Butter Museum at Máslovice. So I pulled out my little guidebook and started paging through the section on day trips, where I ran across a description of Mělník. So I hopped on the bus to have a look.

The castle (of course there’s a castle: this is a Czech town) is beautifully situated, on a hill overlooking the confluence of the Vltava and Labe rivers:

This view is said to be the inspiration for Smetana’s Ma Vlast ("My Country"). The castle was confiscated from the Lobkowicz family by the communists, but has since been returned to them.

From the castle courtyard; in the lower left is the entrance to the restaurant:

And the opposite side of the courtyard:

That’s the spire of the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul in the background.

The castle has been well-restored and the tour was interesting. As an aside, I’ll point out that, by and large, it’s the castles that have been returned to private hands that have been better restored and that have better tours. The ones operated by the government have largely been gracelessly restored and the tours are more boring.

The Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul has an ossuary that a Czech professor designed with a group of his students back in 1914. Once you’ve seen the ossuary at Sedlec, though, this one is a snoozer!

There’s really not much else to see in Mělník. The City Hall on the main square is attractive, but not worth a trip:

On my way back to the bus stop, I happened to pass by a cemetery, and decided to take a peek:

I was really surprised, and touched, that it seemed that all of the graves were decorated with potted flowers. It was only when I noticed the pomlázka decorating one of the arrangements that I realized that this must be an Easter-specific tradition. Even so, it was impressive that each grave apparently had someone still caring for it.

So, spring is putting in some tentative appearances: the snow seems to have stopped, the cherry blossoms are in bloom, and people are venturing into the parks. I paid my first visit to Stromovka ("place of trees") Park this weekend.

The weeping willows are drooping picturesquely:

The afore-mentioned cherry blossoms are on display:

And everything is beautifully green:

(And no, I’m not sure what these buildings are.)

There’s also a planetarium in Stromovka, and I was thinking about visiting, as I dearly love a planetarium show. But the commentary would all be in Czech, so I decided against it. For now, anyway.

While waiting for the tram home, I noticed these paintings on the walls of adjoining buildings:

I’d kind of heard of Jiří z Poděbrad, though I couldn’t off-hand tell you much more than that he was a King of Bohemia and that the next metro stop from Náměstí Míru is named for him. Vlasta, on the other hand, was completely new to me, and it took me a bit of Googling to find out who she was. Turns out that she is said to have been the favorite handmaid of the mythical Libuše, the prophetess who founded Prague. Libuše had been careful to protect the rights of women, and when she died, those rights were endangered. So Vlasta rallied the other women, and launched the Maidens’ War. There is, alas, no happy ending. Which is probably why it’s so hard to find out who she was.