Not In Time for the Gypsies

I had planned to post on Emir Kusturica's opera production of his own film The Time of the Gypsies (in which he himself stars with his group The No-Smoking Orchestra), which finishes today at the Opéra Bastille and, having been sold out for the last week, was playing a Bastille Day matinée, which was free of charge. So I arrive two hours before the curtain, hopeful of grabbing a place; my naïvete was misplaced however as the queue had already begun to snake long out of sight up rue de Lyon. My guess was that there were already 1,000 people in line, which suggests that there would not be room for them all. I wasn't sure of the capacity of the theatre but I wasn't going to wait two hours to find out. By way of consolation, the film is running at Le Champo, so I think I'll give it another look this week.