By İrem Naz Duymuş (AMER/IV) & Eda Emekoğlu (AMER/IV)
nazduymus@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
eda.emekoglu@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
My growing affection for Italy and the Italian language has found another place to settle: the opera. Watching Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro,” or “Le nozze di Figaro,” has given me one more reason to keep falling in love with the sound of Italian—and a good excuse to spend an evening at the theater. My recommendation? Arrive an hour early, order a nice espresso from the opera house café and settle into a genuine conversation with a friend before the performance. Coffee, conversation and opera: your own little Italian evening in Ankara.
With music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and an Italian libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, the opera follows Figaro and Susanna as their wedding plans become entangled in the desires and schemes of Count Almaviva’s household. What should be a celebration quickly becomes a complicated negotiation of love, jealousy and power.
For me, the characters were one of the production’s strongest elements. The costumes were good overall, though the set design truly stood out. It was the visual highlight of the evening, alongside the pleasure of watching these personalities share the stage. Humour ran throughout the performance; I lost count of how many times we laughed.
Beneath that humour, the opera invites a feminist reading. Susanna and the countess challenge the count’s authority through their intelligence and cooperation, turning the household into a space of struggle over power, desire and control. Their actions call traditional gender roles into question: who is expected to obey, who assumes the right to decide and what happens when women challenge those expectations?
I would warmly recommend this production to anyone who loves opera.
But why stop at one evening? If Figaro has put you in the mood for more music, here are a few dates to keep in mind in Ankara this October:
● October 17, 8 p.m. — “Beethoven & Dvořák,” Bilkent Concert Hall. Violinist Viktoria Mullova joins conductor Tito Ceccherini and the Bilkent Symphony Orchestra for Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and Dvořák’s “From the New World” Symphony.
● October 24, 8 p.m. — “The Firebird,” Bilkent Concert Hall. With flutist Emily Beynon and conductor Tito Ceccherini, the program includes Stravinsky’s “Firebird Suite.”
For a change of tempo, AYDEED, who studied at Bilkent, will perform at Holly Stone Performance Hall Ankara on October 17 at 9 p.m. With Kalben, Sufle and Motive also performing in Ankara this month, October offers plenty of opportunities to find a concert that suits your taste—or try something outside your usual playlist.
For those who would rather spend an evening at the cinema, “Verity” has arrived on the big screen. Adapted from Colleen Hoover’s novel and starring Dakota Johnson, Anne Hathaway and Josh Hartnett, the psychological thriller follows Lowen Ashleigh, a struggling writer hired to finish the work of bestselling author Verity Crawford. I have come across comparisons between the book and its screen adaptation, and although I have yet to read the novel or watch the film, I am curious about both. What would you recommend: book or movie first?
October’s calendar seems full of possibilities. Pick something that suits your mood—and perhaps Ankara’s autumn weather—and make an evening of it.
And a final question for those who have been further afield: did anyone make it to Munich for Oktoberfest this year? Seeing so many friends’ Instagram stories made me wish I could have joined them. If you went, I would love to hear about your experience. What stayed with you—the music, the atmosphere, the food or something else that you did not expect?
