One of the only planned events for my trip was this night at the opera.. or rather, operetta… well, actually, musical.  But it was at the Kiev National Academic Theatre of Operetta, so that’s something.  Kiev, like most cities throughout Ukraine and Europe, has formal, grand opera house, and while it would have been cool to see something there, it just didn’t quite work out.

But there are many venues in Kiev, including a children’s theater, a theater of modern dramatic arts and several symphony halls.  Truth be told, though, there tends to be a lot of overlap between them all — the opera house had musical performance, the children’s theater had things for adults, and modern plays showed up everywhere.  It seemed, though, that the Operetta House did have a significant number of offerings of lighter fare — they recently did “Kiss Me, Kate!” (Цілуй мене, Кет!, featuring the music of Коул Портер – Cole Porter).

The show for our night was “My Fair Lady,” of which I knew the story and most of the songs, although I did get the DVD before my trip so it would all be fresh in my mind.  I definitely needed things to be fresh, because the musical was being performed in Ukrainian.  I scarcely know any Russian and make no claims at all about knowing Ukrainian (which is a different language), but I still had a really good time.  It had good actors with good energy (especially the guy playing Henry Higgins), so I had no trouble following along.  I think I even got some of the humor.

Sadly, I don’t have any photos of the performance itself — cameras were not allowed to be used during the performance, naturally.  (They do have a few photos on their site, should you be interested.)  Most of my photos are of that part of Kiev, the theater building and my companion, Viktoria.  She, like me, isn’t wild about being in photos, but this was a special occasion, so she was asking me to take photos of her.

There are fewer captions on these photos, because between my notes above and my posting during the trip, I think I said most everything.  But you may still want to flip through them all, because I think there are a few good comments there.

A Night at the Operetta