MP: Opera and Football
The sound of raindrops hitting the air conditioner suspended from my old bedroom window, rain pattering down on the attic eaves overhead, is soothing. It's a calm sort of rain, steady and melodic, and I want to let it lull me to sleep. It's late here, well after midnight, though I've not bothered changing my computer's clock to the local timezone, so it tries to tell me it's still yesterday.
We went to the opera today, Mom and me, and saw the Met's live simulcast of Carmen. It's a brand new production, and it was amazing. Gorgeous sets. Gorgeous voices. Gorgeous singer in the title role. I suppose the Met Simulcasts are available in California, too. In fact I know they are, at the Redwood City Century Theatre, but I never think to go. But when Mom said she'd take me to see Carmen while I was visiting, I was beside myself.
Carmen was my first opera: I fell in love with one of its most famous arias, L'Habanera, when I was three, and saw this animated short of an orange singing it on Sesame Street. When I was sixteen and started taking private voice lessons, it was the first aria I learned. It was my audition piece for several years, and won me two small music scholarships and a couple of solo performance competitions. Carmen was the first opera I ever saw staged, when my father took me to see it when I was seventeen. It was the first operatic score I bought, and the first opera I bought on CD. It was, and is, in short, my opera.
It was awesome to see it at the Met, even it I was in a movie theatre in Nashville. Awesome to see it with my mom. And then we came home and I watched the Saints slaughter the Cardinals with my stepdad. Opera with Mom, football with Stepdad. Dinner with everyone. And after dinner, jigsaw puzzling with Mom and Sister banker_babe. Now that's what I call an excellent day.
Now I am excellently tired, and the rain continues to spatter against the old windowpanes, to plink on the metal box air conditioner, to tap steeply angled shingles with a dull, wooden xylophone sound. And I am going to bed.
We went to the opera today, Mom and me, and saw the Met's live simulcast of Carmen. It's a brand new production, and it was amazing. Gorgeous sets. Gorgeous voices. Gorgeous singer in the title role. I suppose the Met Simulcasts are available in California, too. In fact I know they are, at the Redwood City Century Theatre, but I never think to go. But when Mom said she'd take me to see Carmen while I was visiting, I was beside myself.
Carmen was my first opera: I fell in love with one of its most famous arias, L'Habanera, when I was three, and saw this animated short of an orange singing it on Sesame Street. When I was sixteen and started taking private voice lessons, it was the first aria I learned. It was my audition piece for several years, and won me two small music scholarships and a couple of solo performance competitions. Carmen was the first opera I ever saw staged, when my father took me to see it when I was seventeen. It was the first operatic score I bought, and the first opera I bought on CD. It was, and is, in short, my opera.
It was awesome to see it at the Met, even it I was in a movie theatre in Nashville. Awesome to see it with my mom. And then we came home and I watched the Saints slaughter the Cardinals with my stepdad. Opera with Mom, football with Stepdad. Dinner with everyone. And after dinner, jigsaw puzzling with Mom and Sister banker_babe. Now that's what I call an excellent day.
Now I am excellently tired, and the rain continues to spatter against the old windowpanes, to plink on the metal box air conditioner, to tap steeply angled shingles with a dull, wooden xylophone sound. And I am going to bed.