Hello everyone!

So on October 17th 2014, I was invited by my friend Zulaika to attend her concert. She's back from Germany! :-D (and now she's back in Germany). She once held a concert before she went to Germany (forgot what year, but it was a few years ago) and I was a bit reluctant to attend because I was afraid to go alone... what a mistake. But now I don't care-- I went alone nevertheless, and it was one of the best decisions I have made this year. Thank you for holding this event!

The performers are Diatra Zulaika and Daniel Chagnon-Kropp. They both met at Folkwang University in Essen, Germany. Zulaika studies Opera while Daniel studies Master's Degree for Classical Guitar. Their concert was held at Goethehaus Jakarta. Going there marks the first time I went to Goethehaus and the interior of the building was amazing! Very artsy. Also, because this building is quite old, when you go further inside, the walls, the paint, combined together they look very old school! It's nice to see a physical mark of history in this building; there are the modern parts and there's also the old school parts.

They held this performance in commemoration of World Peace Day 2014, as stated in the invitation. Commemoration comes in many forms! Relating to peace, well, I would definitely understand why music can be related to peace.

In the Romantic era, Arthur Schopenhauer created a hierarchy of fine arts, and music was at the top of the hierarchy. This meant that music was considered the highest form of fine arts, and his reason was because music was the "most universal form of art" because music could immediately affect human beings emotionally compared to any other forms of art. Classical opera music have stories in it, and often times, the songs invoke emotions in our hearts when we listen to them.

This is my personal opinion, but opera songs give you a feeling of tranquility, sometimes sadness, sometimes happiness, cheerfulness, or any other emotions, but definitely not any anger or aggressive emotions. That's why I could understand why it would be related to peace. Imagine performing a classical opera piece in front of an audience, what kind of emotions would it bring to people's hearts? I bet they're going to feel peaceful.

• "Come againe, sweet love doth now invite"
• "Whoever thinks or hopes of love for love"

• "Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt"
• "Kennst du das Land"

• "Chanson des Bergères"
• "Zoraide"
• "Romance de Claudine"

• "Heiss mich nicht reden"
• "So lass mich scheinen"

• "El Paño Moruno"
• "Seguidila Murciana"
• "Asturiana"
• "Jota"
• "Nana"
• "Cancion"
• "Polo"

The performance by Diatra Zulaika and  Daniel Chagnon-Kropp

Me and Zulaika

The lady who helped take the picture had shaky hands :') but anyways it was a picture of me with Zulaika! It has been a while since I last saw her and I do miss her a lot! :-)

Attending her concert, I remember how I wanted to attend a performance in an opera house. This year I had gone to Europe, but sadly, the opera performances' schedules couldn't meet mine. Someday, someday, when I go to Europe, I hope I'll manage to see an opera performance. The tickets are expensive, but it's worth to watch once in a while.

One of the things I also noticed is that being an opera singer will probably make you a polyglot whether you like it or not-- you'd sing songs from different languages and of course you have to be able to pronounce the words well enough to be able to sing them. Aside from singing them, you will also have to understand the meaning behind it so you can build an emotional connection with the song, and to be able to sing it wholeheartedly (ok I'm exaggerating lol). In this performance only (with the encore songs), Zulaika sang songs in Indonesian, English, German, French, and Spanish. That's already FIVE languages. While you may not be as fluent in speaking them, you know how the pronunciation works in that language and that's already a plus.

Lastly, this is nothing related to opera, but I noticed something about stage lighting. In this case, the main character of the performance is standing still, so the lighting does not change while she's singing, but the lighting was positioned to make her have a "Rembrandt lighting" effect.

Rembrandt lighting

Those lighting effects are photography lighting that usually makes photographs look nice. Taking pictures with a smartphone from afar won't look very good (look at my photo of Zulaika and Daniel performing above as an example), but the photographers will definitely get good pictures, and us audiences will see it as pleasing to the eyes, despite probably not knowing why :-P

Alright, that's all for my post on Zulaika and Daniel's concert: International Peace - One Song at a Time! It was a wonderful performance and I'm looking forward to another one. Cheers everyone!