COPENHAGEN — I’d never been to an opera. I don’t know Italian. I don’t know Danish. I don’t  know the story of Falstaff, although I remembered to nod several times as Courtenay tried to fill me in. But there I was sitting in a well-dressed crowd of several hundred Danes watching a Saturday afternoon performance of Falstaff, the opera, performed in Italian, with Danish subtitles flickering across the top of the stage.

And yet it was, even for me, a pretty good show.

The Copenhagen Opera House is an impressive building. From the outside, coming across the water on one of my beloved harbor buses, it looked a little like a fencing mask, with narrow belts of metal lining the windows. The reception area was full of light, with amazing views of downtown Copenhagen and up and down the colorful waterfront.

The stage and three tiers of seating were all inside a huge, heart-shaped structure made of beautiful mahogany. The acoustics were amazing. I’m not the guy you ought to turn to for a cogent review of the individual performances, but the Falstaff character, an American, had a great physical presence, he made you smile just to look at him, although there were a few others whose singing voices had more power.

The sets were impressive, the costumes were strong, too. I don’t know what the hell happened, exactly, but there tricks played on Falstaff, tricks played on other main characters, and it all ended pretty much on a high note. *

And then we rode the harbor bus home.

*(I told Courtenay she should have been the one to blog about the opera, but she’s asleep.)