From the outside looking in: talking about Don Q. and blond spanish men...

Apr 12

Apr 12 From the outside looking in: talking about Don Q. and blond spanish men...

Many years ago a funny fact happened during one of the intermissions of a certain "Don Quixote" performance (I think it was 2013) in the Vienna State Opera... while I was having a glass of wine and eating some crayfish hors-d’œuvres I heard some people just beside me, criticizing Kirill Kourlaev’s blond hair (because he was playing a Spanish man) and failing to realize that he was giving an incredible performance as the "Torero" (I always refuse to use the word "Matador" - such a horrible one... ).

A couple was especially loud… You may have experienced at some point in your life people that always believe to "know everything better than others do".

Anyways, I simply had to “get into this conversation” to remind them that Ingrid Bergman also played “Maria” in “For whom the bell tolls” (Hemingway’s great novel placed during the Spanish civil War) and that she was a blue-eyed blond… like thousands of Spanish men and women that come from the Sierra Nevada! And that is common knowledge.

I don’t think this couple is going ever to talk to me again! I see them rather frequently at the Vienna State Opera...