Chapella Sistina und Rigoletto

Bienvenue mes amies, ça c’est le quatrième post de moi. Je suis toujours en Rom et aussi le final jour en ce lieu. Demain, je vais partir pour Firenze (Florence), mais ici est un petit souvenir de la Chapelle Sixtine et d’un Opéra qui s’appelle Rigoletto. En suite.

Actually am in Milan right now as this post goes up. The mention of leaving Rome and going to Florence, well that is a little backdated. Hmm...There was no wireless in Florence thus had to back log this entry. The Florence one is still a work in progress...okies, disclaimer over. On we go! =)

I believe that when we travel to different places in the world, we have an idea of where we would want to visit, what we want to see, what we must do. This is the last day that we are spending in Rome; we’ve seen almost everything there is and all that I want to. Sauf un; the Sistine chapel. It was closed yesterday, thus we decided to make another trip today to try our luck. Paulo Coelho wrote once that if you want something bad enough, the world will conspire to help you make it happen; how long it’ll take is another matter all together though. Consider me a museum and art buff; there is a subtle sublimity to art, a transcendent beauty which reaches beyond our mere corporeality and into the élan of the soul (to borrow a phrase from Sarris which is not totally out of context here…right kenji?).

Anyway, the day started slightly miserably; it rained the night before and continued till the morning. We walked out to wet wet world. It was like Paris all over again. A small digression here for all you el cheapos out there: here is a small way to save money on transport (just make sure you don’t get caught). Buses and trams in Europe require you to purchase tickets, which can be bought at either automated machines (Billetterie in French or Biglitetta over here) or at the Tabacchis (essentially the local version of mama shops). However, the onus is on you to validate your ticket on board the bus; the bus drivers only drive, they don’t bother bout ticketing. Thus, you can just simply hop onto the buses and ride for free. Don’t get caught though, if not there’s a small fine to pay. Not likely to happen though.
Okay, back to the main story. We hopped onto a bus (gratuit, bien sur) and headed down to the Vatican again. Guess what we saw.




And it was raining. Cold, wet and miserable. Again.


The queue stretched for the entire length of the Vatican wall, all the way into St Peter’s Square. Argh. So what do Singaporeans do best, or rather, when we see a queue, what do we do? Join it lah…It took over an hour of crawling through the snaking line to reach the entrance of the Vatican Museum. Given the misery that we had to suffer, the trip had better be worth it…

Well, it got from bad, to worse. Don’t get me wrong, the Vatican museum is beautiful, with many rooms filled with religious artifacts, icons and paintings. The place again is huge. But it was hapsolutely hapsolutely teeming with life. Felt like an orange in a Peel Fresh factory, or in a Jack Lalanne Juicer commercial; getting all my juice squeezed out, every single drop. And there were so many detours that they imposed on us to better manage the crowd; a normal 5 minute walk into the chapel turned into a 45 minute marathon. And Korean tourists are SHO rude! Kept pushing and shoving and speaking in that incomprehensible guttural tongue. Wanted to punch this irritating fella in the family jewels; he was just like those honkers in traffic jams, trying to force a way through a gridlock and when inevitably failing to do so, being an absolute idiot. With is no place to move, one just has to be patient, right? No, he had to push, push, push, even a mother in labour wouldn’t push half as much and with much less urgency. Koreans. Rain might be the poster boy of Korean men for some of you, but the common Korean is still very much unattractive. Or at least in my opinion. Dommage.

Enough griping for now. Finally we made it into the Sistine Chapel. For a Lit student, I find myself in the past two entries at a loss for words to describe what I see. Optimus Primate would be so happy to deconstruct me with Lacanian discourse on my failure. You have to be there for yourself and see Michelangelo’s masterpiece. There is no substitute for the real thing. Photographs are not allowed in the chapel…But…Well…



Had to take them all surreptitiously. Really poor photos, but it’s the best I could do. As a word of advice (and I hope you do take this and follow it), if you want to take photos of precious artwork in museums or as such, please do it without flash. You will cause undue stress to the colours and accelerate the degradation of the artwork. You take one picture with flash, the Japanese tourist take another one…the American another one hundred (them being idiots and all), so on and so forth…it all adds up. So please, be nice to paintings, switch off your flashes. Than again, it depends on what you understand by not flashing…either way, don’t do it. Flashing either way harms things…and some things are better left hidden. Period.


Don't think you can see the pictures really clearly. A pity though because the ability of the figures to just literarily stand out is amazing. The entire chapel is a huge exposition; even the pillars and drapes on the walls are actually painted on. They looked so real, the way they folded and the play of light on the satin-like surface. It was beautiful. We huddled together to get a shot of it =)

The paintings across the ceilings were representative of stories from the bible. Sitting at the corner of the chapel and looking up, it is amazing and almost beyond my faculty of comprehension on how one is able to transform vision into reality. The hand of the master is a work of art in itself. We picture beauty in our minds; Michelangelo extracts the pictures in his mind and turns them into physical entities, giving corporeality to an otherwise abstract irreality. The figures appear to move beyond the ceiling and walls and become three dimensional representations. You have to see it for yourself. As you look at the finger of god touching Adam’s, it looks almost real, as if truly for that one moment in time, man had been able to touch God; for however brief and flitting that moment might have been. And the loss of that touch becomes all the more painful, because we know that there exists an inevitable distance which is so close and yet so far.


The lovely spiral staircase that we have to take to exit the museum. And with that, it’s the end of the Sistine Chapel. If you have the opportunity, do go there; it is a trip well worth it.
For the first time since we came to Rome, we had a proper dinner. Walked across the road from our hostel to Mama Angelo’s to treat ourselves for our frugality and in the spirit of things as well; we bought tickets to watch Rigoletto, an opera by Verdi (if you know who he is). Truly arty farty. Ha. Dinner was wonderful; finally, hot food and meat. Had a beef fillet in Gogonzolla cheese. Mmm…total cost came to 15euros. It is actually really cheap if you don’t convert, and for the quality of the food, it was really good.


Nice huge slice of beef. Probably the last time I’m gonna be able to eat anything like this for the next few months though.

Rigoletto is an opera written by Verdi, based on the play Le Roi s’amuse (which loosely tranglated means "the king amusing/playing with himself". Go figure.) by Victor Hugo (he of the Les Miserables and Notre Dame de Paris fame). It was a three hour snore fest, Haha. There was this old guy who kept snoring. A really expensive nap. Okay I did rather enjoy it though, fell asleep only once. The opera is in Italian, understood almost nothing. But (and here is some pretentious pomposity coming up), the transcendentalism of music is such that it goes beyond language and words, feelings and emotions touch the âme of our existence, there is no need for mere explanations of the actions on stage. Just close your eyes and feel the joy, laughter, tears, pain, sorrow; the full plethora of emotions that make us human. That said, seriously, before going for an opera, read the synopsis or the novel. For all its transcendental abilities, I understood squat until I looked it up on Wikipedia; ever reliable, Marvell will testify to that =)

The experience of going to the opera for the first time was an interesting one. For one, we bought the most expensive tickets; they cost like 100 euros each but we paid student prices so it was half of that. And the fact that they were the only seats left. We had like the best box seats in the house. Felt like a moment out of some film; the one that came to mind was Match Point, at the opera house. And we were so underdressed. Everyone was dressed to the nines; we were like little dowdy, crumpy Asians. And I looked like I just came back from snowboarding in the Winter Olympics or something. It was the battle of mink coats against my ski jacket. Not much of a fight there…


This is the view I had from our box seats. Think I’d wanna try and watch other operas around the continent; I know I do want to catch La Traviata and Les Miserables some time in the future. And next time, will make sure I’m well dressed for the occasion, not like this time. So paiseh…

Okay, that’s all for today. Will be leaving Rome tomorrow and head for the beautiful city of Florence. Am really looking forward to it; and honestly, after 4 days in Rome, I’m glad to be moving on. Nothing much else to see or do here; been such a good boy and have not gone like clubbing around the place and getting myself smashed. Not yet anyway. =). Maybe in summer, will do an European drunk fest trip. Mmm…see how.
Bon, c’est tout. À demain mes amies. Santé!