Ok, that's all.
No no no I'll write all about it.
Let's see. I already posted the pic that Husband took of me on my way out the door.
Actually I need to backup here for a sec.
A few weeks ago I joined a local opera-fan MeetUp Group. A bunch of people in the group were also going, and one of them emailed me to say that she'd be in the lobby with a MeetUp sign. I didn't see them before the performance, although I did see this sign:
I went to my seat up in the third-to-last row in the balcony.
The theater is pretty small though so all seats are great.
The opera started with the maid singing as she came up the aisle through the audience. She was awesome! She stole the show. The entire opera was just ridiculously goofy with current cultural references. There's a lot of room in the dialogue for that. The plot is very silly. Um... let's see... there's this husband and wife. He got arrested for jaywalking and then his jail sentence was extended because he tried to bribe the police officer. So he's supposed to go off to jail. Meanwhile, his old college buddy, some cute baritone whose name I don't recall (and it's just as well, for my own sake!) plans to get back at him for a prank he played on him when the guy was drunk. He was dressed as a bat for a costume party, and was so drunk that the husband character, as a joke, dropped him on a bench in the middle of town. He woke up the next morning and had to run home dressed as a bat. Ok so he wants to get back at the guy so he ... ok wait this is too complicated to describe. Read this instead. It's the very production I went to see. So basically, everyone has a costume and they all go to this party and pretend to be someone else. They all get drunk and let's see.. the husband who should be in jail flirts with a mysterious woman who is really his wife in a mask. She had been with an old boyfriend earlier in the evening, a tenor who kept singing Verdi. After the husband left for the party (the wife thought he was going off to jail) the boyfriend came in, put on the husband's robe and sat down. Then the jailer came to arrest the husband, and, to avoid scandal, they let him arrest the boyfriend. At the end everyone goes to the jail for one reason or another and it all ends happily ever after. There are can-cans, conga lines, silly songs and many physical gags. And the singing- WOW WOW WOW!!! Everyone was FABULOUS. Seriously. On top of all that silliness! It was AWESOME!!!! It was semi-staged so the orchestra was on the stage behind a scrim. It came down after the overture. I really liked watching the orchestra - seeing all the violin bows move in unison, like a dance. And I knew all the music. Go figure. I've never heard this opera, that I know of, yet I knew the entire thing. I mentioned that later to my mom and she was like, "Well, of course. I used to play it all the time." And then she launched into song!
Ok so first intermission I was wandering around and found the MeetUp people. Uh oh. Remember that group I was mixed up with when I was waiting for Juan Diego Florez to come out the stage door at the Met? Yep. Talk about socially awkward. All they did was complain that the orchestra sounded muddy, did I think they sounded muddy? The violins and the horns? They were asking me about the summer season and one of them said, "Aren't you in the opera company?" and I'm trying to tell them that I'm a super, no singing, etc, but it was too late - they were starstruck! It was bizarre! They kept asking me all these questions, firing them off one after another, and they were so excited to speak to someone who actually appears onstage during an opera. It was awkward and finally I truthfully told them that I had to get on the line for the ladies' room before intermission ended. They invited me to join them for dessert after the show and I gracefully declined, again truthfully telling them that I was meeting someone from the chorus afterwards. Not that I had plans to hang out with said chorus member, but they didn't need that info.
Afterwards I did get a chance to say hi to someone I worked with this past summer. We chatted a bit about this and that. Then as I was leaving I ran into the super captain. Haha love how that sounds. Super-Captain. The guy in charge of the supernumeraries, I mean. His 10 year old son was a super in the production. He said he'll probably learn in April or May if they need supers for the summer. I told him I saw Lucia at the Met and they had maids and servants, so hopefully whoever directs our version will want them too. I told him I'm interested and to keep me in mind.
And then... I left.
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