This opera was SO weird. I really liked it!

New for the 2019-2020 season, they’ve changed the opera start time from 2:30 to 2:00. After our disappointing experience with Lucia di Lammermoor last year, Mom and I had honestly been planning on canceling our subscription and maybe switching back to the ballet, because the late start time always meant ( Read more... )

I've been so out of LJ-land for so long, I never posted anything about the entire 2018-2019 opera season. At this point I'm mostly using LJ to keep track of stuff I did so I don't forget, so I'm going to take a stab at recording what I remember.

Lucia di Lammermoor was in September 2018, at the Academy of Music. This show was really, really well ( Read more... )

So, it's been a while. I definitely don't have time to maintain a journal online like I used to, and with giving myself the freedom not to post all my books, I also haven't been keeping up with event posts. But the thing about that is that I've got Goodreads for book tracking, but I genuinely use LJ/DW for capturing memories about events. So here's ( Read more... )

This was a truly enjoyable opera. Lots of slapstick and fun, lots of innuendo, beautiful sets. Really well done. My only issue with it was the length: Mom and I usually try to catch the train in the 5:00 hour (it's something like the 12s for me and the 20s for her), but we stayed an extra hour in hopes of seeing the whole opera, and it still wasn't ( Read more... )

The first opera of this year's season was Turandot. Our tickets were originally for October 2, but F and I had plans to visit family in Pittsburgh that weekend, so we needed to move them to the previous weekend. Mom gave me the tickets; I put them in my neighbor Sid's mailbox, and a few days later new tickets showed up in my mailbox. The service ( Read more... )

Comic opera in which Nemorino, hapless car mechanic (in this version, set in the late 1940s), falls in love with beautiful Adina, a schoolteacher who just isn't interested - until Nemorino gets a love potion from shady Dr. Dulcamara, and, confident in the potion's power, starts acting confident for once. Adina thinks he's finally gotten over her ( Read more... )

This opera was a truly impressive new work, an adaptation of the book (which I've never read, which was also adapted into an award-winning film that I haven't seen). The last time I saw a new opera it was Oscar, which sadly was dreadful, and I feared the worst here, but luckily my fears were for naught ( Read more... )

I was pretty sure we've seen this one before (and we did, back in 2010), but Mom didn't remember it. It's Verdi, and it was pretty lovely. The lead, Violetta, was played by Lisette Oropesa, and she was fantastic as the courtesan who is driven away from her liver by his father and then dies dramatically of tuberculosis. Alek Shrader and Stephen ( Read more... )

Last week Mom and I went to the opera. It was very eventful. Most importantly, April 26 was Free Soft Pretzel Day, so we each got a free soft pretzel on the way to the theater. Huzzah ( Read more... )

Last week Mom and I went to opera! First time in a while. I was really excited for this one, too, but unfortunately it was kind of a bust ( Read more... )