one more, in the name of love...

CAR UPDATE: Methinks I will need a new bumper... Joy, unbounded. I will keep y'all posted.
(Funnily, now I've got Mazeppa "Revolution in Dance" in my head with her line "Maybe there's something wrong with your bumpah")

But back to happier days... last Thursday. I'll spare you all the travel details. Original 8:00 AM flight got canceled - LaGuardia + rain = disaster. But American Airlines seemlessly seated me on the 9:00 flight which left without incident. I landed, arrived at the hotel and had lunch. Imagine, if you will, a weary and hungry traveler, just off her flight. It is raining and she just wants some hot soup and a sandwich. Or better, a sandwich and a cup of tea as she's not had any caffeine yet today. Off she wanders down Amsterdam, looking for a cozy diner to park in. Wanders. And wanders. Her jeans are getting wet. She passes many places that are either too expensive or too fried (her stomach just cannot handle something called "The Chirping Chicken") or too bizarre (sushi, and what appeared to be a Japanese Italian restaurant. Quoi??) when all she wants is a damn bowl of soup, people! Suddenly, a light shines out in the darkness. It is a divine establishment known as "Crumbs" they sell not soup, but perhaps the next best thing - CUPCAKES. Ah, she's gotta come back here. But wait! She's getting wetter and wetter and thinks that's it, goddamn it, it's my VACATION. If I want a cupcake for my lunch, I'm gonna have one!!! So the weary traveler rested her wet self and had a not so nourishing but nonetheless delicious lunch of a massive red velvet cupcake and a steaming cup of earl grey tea. After that, our heroine goes back to the hotel and commences to... take a nap.

Yeah, I know. Livin' it up in Manhattan! I am very very exciting!!! But I needed my strength for the opera. LONG shower and sinus steam, then off to dinner (spinach ravioli at La Grolla, also on Amsterdam, yum!) and The Met.

I arrived really really really early, and it was pouring down bucketfuls of rain. I wandered some more around the Renee Shop, oh, wait, I mean the Met Shop - which had a gigantic shrine erected to the Diva, complete with her (gorgeous!) opening night gowns, her cds, her (gorgeous!) face plastered on season posters, the season book, and kniccknacks like mint boxes and something else... but I don't remember. Also bottles of her perfume La Voce. I was afraid I'd drop the bottle, so I didn't venture near it. The new shop is nice, but not as cluttered with stuff as the old one was, so it didn't take too long for me to browse around in there. So I hung around for, oh, I think it was close to an hour, looking at the neat looking Dr. Atomic sculpture (I WISH I had made it to the Met to see Dr. A again!! It was UNBELIEVEABLE! And this from someone who seriously dislikes modern opera. It rocked. If I had not been otherwise engaged at a work function, I would have gone to see it in HD.)Anyway, the Met is pretty spectacular, all shiny chandeliers and red velvet walls... My seat was not great - orchestra, left side all the way in the back, a few rows before the Standing Room area.

Thais is actually one of the only operas I have seen multiple times. I saw it three times when Renee and Thomas Hampson performed it in Chicago in 2003 (and one of those was the infamous dress rehearsal that I got to attend because I also purchased a ticket to a planned giving lecture. Now they seem to think I've got money and send me stuff all the time. HAHAHA! Yeah, right.) Thais has some incredibly gorgeous music, including the moving "Meditation" which I think is one of my favorite classical pieces of all time. The plot is... odd. Fun loving actress courtesan Thais is living it up in Alexandria, when this monk sees her in a dream and decides he needs to - what else - save her soul. The chief monk tells him to keep his nose out of it, but does he listen?? No. So off he goes to the ugly set of Alexandria to find Thais. She laughs in his face, but later, when she's alone (in her weird bedroom set that features many additional chairs all facing the bed - WTF? Guest chairs? Is she expecting an audience??) she ponders his words. She worries that when she's old and ugly, nobody will love her and CERTAINLY Christian LaCroix won't be designing her glam designer wardrobe any more. The monk appears and convinces her, in the span of maybe 20 minutes? That she should follow him. He sells it well - eternal life! Happiness! A convent! Wheee! Sign me up! And then - after a little "Meditation" she decides to go with it. Great, he tells her. Burn all your stuff and then we'll take a little walk through the desert. Awesome, she says, I'll be right with you, padre. So he brings her to the convent. His "teachings" she tells him, have shown her the way, and she has traded all of her great clothes for sackcloth (which looks pretty glam, too!). He goes home, tormented because - wait for it - he has really loved her all along. He realizes he'll never see her again, then gets another dream that she's dying. But no! He heads back across the desert to find her - 3 months later - a saint and waiting to be welcomed into heaven. Then she dies.

So yeah, totally believeable. Great music though. Thomas Hampson is simply incredible. At one point, the man is singing off stage and yet he was as clear as though he was still standing front and center. I don't think he was mic'd either. And Renee? Well, she was just sublime. What a perfect role for her, it fit her like a glove, perfect for her voice, a joy from beginning to end. The production was imported from Lyric, so it was like being home except you know, 100 times cooler. It was, in fact - Metacular. Hahahaha.

More to come...

pearl fishers @ lyric opera

Last night, my personal Lyric season kicked off with Bizet's rarely performed Pearl Fishers, starring Nicole Cabell, Nathan Gunn and Eric Cutler. We were in NEW subscription seats, having moved from the upper balcony to the back of the first balcony. Way hey hey, movin' on up... Our neighbors were much better behaved, thankfully and we are conveniently located close to an aisle at the back of the balcony, making intermission escapes and after show dashes to the parking lot much more speedy.

So, anyway, Pearl Fishers... very very beautiful music, and well, plenty of opera hunks running around half clothed. Nathan Gunn cut a powerful figure as Zurga who conveniently was crowned king at the opening of the opera. It was very relaxed though, he was all, "We have to choose a leader" and everyone else was like "How about... you?" If only things could really be decided so easily. Anyway, then his friend the tenor shows up and they kind of relive old times through the one famous duet from this opera, and they vow to never let chicks get in the way of their BFF-hood. Bros before hos, yo. And then... you'll never guess what happens... a girl gets between them! The high priestess who is supposed to pray to keep everyone safe while they're diving for pearls has a thing for Nadir (the BFF) and they become secret lovahs for about half of a scene. Then the high priest catches them and sentences them to death. Quel dommage and sacre bleu. Their fate is in the hands of Zurga who's jealous of the secret relationship (he seems more upset over the loss of Nadir than the loss of the girl, whom he also secretly loved, but whatever). She comes to plead for Nadir's life, but it backfires and it just makes Big Z more angry.

In the end though, he goes and sets fire to the pearl fisher's camp and creates a ruse for the lovahs to escape - there's a bit of a plot twist where he discovers that Leila (the priestess) once saved his life so he pays her back by saving hers. Big Z is in trouble for sure, and the head priest shows up at the very end with a scythe... blackout and curtain falls.

So yeah. It got good at the end, but was a little slow going the rest of the time. The music, as I said, was gorgeous, and all three lead singers were wonderful. At the beginning, they announced that Nicole had a cold but would sing for us anyway (yay!) She sounded wonderful.

In two weeks... Natalie Dessay in Manon...

il barbiere...for god's sake, take your binoculars!

Headed to Lyric last night for the second to last opera of the season (there's gotta be a fancy word for that - 'penultimate' maybe?) Rossini's Barber of Seville. If ever there was an award for dream cast in an opera, this has to be it. Even without Mr. Florez (and if you thought I was making it up about his swallowing a fish bone, read all about it here, all of the singers were marvelous. Mr. Florez was replaced as Almaviva by John Osborn. He was joined by the absolutely superb Joyce DiDonato as Rosina, Andrew Shore (who we just saw as Falstaff) and the delicious Nathan Gunn as the titular Barber and 'general factotum'. (I am not sure what a factotum is or does but I am about 90% sure that I want to be one, or at least know one.) He sings the famous aria (you know - "Hey! Figaro! Fiiii-garrr-ooohhhh!") as he is rolling out of bed and then getting dressed. It is *totally* worth the price of admission. Seriously. Bring your binoculars. Even if you're in the damn front row. Aside from that, all of the singers were pretty good actors and comedians too. It was funny - and it was meant to be funny. We could see, all the way in the top balcony, lots of the smaller moments, gestures and glances.

I had seen the production before - back in the day when I was student teaching - we took the kids to see a student matinee(Imagine going to the opera with several busfuls of 7th and 8th graders... Just imagine it. And be glad you will never have to do it.). This John Conklin production features sets and costumes based on, or meant to invoke, the art of Magritte. I really liked it, visually. I thought it was interesting. The only comment I will make (and maybe if I actually read the program notes, I will learn about this) is that I am not sure the connection it had to the action. Does it mean to say the tale is fantasy? That I can understand. Or maybe they're saying it's surreal? Hmmm.

Anyway, it was probably one of my favorites of the season. As soon as we see Onegin (sadly, Dmitri-less) I will recap the Lyric season and look ahead to next year... I did decide to subscribe again, even though I am less than overjoyed by the season selections. We have fewer operas, but better seats, hopefully not in the fussy & cantankerous blue-haired biddy section. Geez. Is that even an option?