In Madagascar

Every ten years the Södermanlands-Nerikes student nation here in Uppsala stage In Madagascar, an opera spectacle from 1869. We saw it ten years ago, and it was magnificent. This year, they had modernized it a bit and the cast was smaller and less professional, which was noticeable. It was still fun, but not nearly as good as ten years ago. The student part of the audience had an excellent time and laughed a lot at what we thought were quite lame newly-inserted jokes, so I suppose the directors and writers had judged things correctly. We were probably not the target audience. Fair enough. The actors were decent, and a couple of them superb.

The story is thin, it's about two European travellers' encounter with cannibals in Madagascar, but the music and libretto are lovely. (One thing worked really well in the revised version: the new dances.)

More pictures: http://www.snerikes.se/bilder/pamadagaskar/
You can listen to a recording from ten or 20 years ago at the record label's site: BIS records