We’re sitting in the
opera house, the opera house, the opera house.
We’re
waiting for the curtains to arise.
We're sitting on the steps of the Budapest Opera House, waiting
for Charity to check whether there’s a matinee showing of Faust. She’s the only
one who sort of speaks Hungarian.
We’re
sitting in the opera house, the opera house, the opera house.
We’re
waiting for the curtains to arise.
I actually don’t know the song. Liberty and Mercina learnt
it in Tour Choir – the most advanced group in the Colorado Children’s Chorale –
but they only remember the first two lines. I was in Chorale too, but I was
never promoted to Tour Choir. They know a lot of songs I don’t.
We’re
sitting in the opera house, the opera house, the opera house.
We’re
waiting for the curtains to arise.
I’ve picked up the song by now – it’s only two lines, and most
of the words are the same. I sing until I get dizzy and have to take a breath.
Chary comes back. There’s no Faust. She sits on the steps and starts to sing
too.
We’re
sitting in the opera house, the opera house, the opera house.
We’re
waiting for the curtains to arise.
We sang a lot on that trip. Charity would sing O Mio Babbino Caro in public squares in Budapest
and Vienna and make me walk around the resulting crowds carrying her sun hat. Pedestrians
would throw 1€ and 2€ coins into it and I felt like a beggar, which was sort of
the case but at least it’s a good story now. We’d use the money to buy lemonade
at fancy cafes later on.
We’re
sitting in the opera house, the opera house, the opera house.
We’re
waiting for the curtains to arise.
We’d sing along to My Hips Don’t Lie and Weekends &
Bleakdays in our apartment when they played on MTV Europe, which still showed actual
music videos most of the time back in 2006. We sang Hungarian folk songs when we
went to tea with my grandfather and grandmother at Budapest’s New York Palace,
which is still the most beautiful place I’ve ever had tea in my life. We would
sing in English every Sunday at the international congregation and sometimes I’d
look up from the hymnal to see if the bishop’s son was looking at me.
We’re
sitting in the opera house, the opera house, the opera house.
We’re
waiting for the curtains to arise.
Now Mercina is upset. She thinks we’re making a scene. Mia’s
always had the most dignity of all of us, unless you catch her at 9pm – then
something funny happens to her blood glucose levels and she starts acting
totally sloshed. But it’s only 2 or 3 in the afternoon right now, and she
stalks off into the cobblestone sunshine of the Budapest afternoon to escape our uncouthness.
We’re
sitting in the opera house, the opera house, the opera house.
We’re
waiting for the curtains to arise.
We can’t see Mercina anymore in the rush of city people running
errands, so Charity makes us get up. When we find Mia, she promises us
that we’ll go to a café for some lemonade.
