Amazing

And I don't just mean the costumes...

Wait Did I Write This?

I was experimenting to see if I could do a Google search that would cause my blog to come up on the first page. I did manage it, and also came across this entry in someone else's blog. I felt like I was reading my own writing when I read it.

A sample line from that entry:

Thank the gods of beautiful almost-naked men for that! It was worth the cost of tickets solely for that one scene of Nathan Gunn half naked!

This is not an opera blogger - just an account of someone's night at the opera. Click the link to find out which one. Or just read the tags here...

Fiddling with the Technorati widget. It suddenly was showing half sentences of the sites that linked here, over on the right side. I fiddled with the code and couldn't get rid of it without compromising the look of the buttons. Will keep trying as I kind of like it.

Finally, on a TOTALLY unrelated note, Husband informed me that several political bloggers participate in what they call, "Cat Pic Friday" where they post a picture of a cat on their blog on, you guessed it, Fridays. I'm frantically trying to think of a way to relate this to opera so I can bore everyone with pictures of my cats once a week. I'll keep working on it. Until then, here's Diego when he was still kittenish. WAIT!!! He's named after Juan Diego Florez. That makes it opera related, right?

Why Opera Keeps me Awake

I'll always love this. I feel so lucky to have seen it performed live, just like this, with the same three singers. From La Fille du Regiment:



And then there's this, from La Cenerentola, which, now that I listen to after the Donizetti, doesn't sound that different. Rossini here, Donizetti there... A coworker of mine who Knows These Things told me that they competed in how quickly they could throw an opera together.



Here's a fun one from Barbiere, especially for those of you who like some girl-on-girl action:



Since they play catch with an orange in the above video, here's the orange's "revenge" as she sings Habanera from Carmen. I remember this from my childhood!



Now listen to this craziness. More Cenerentola. Lots of Cecelia Bartoli... her voice doesn't sound real...



This just swirls my brain. I love it! From Matilde di Shabran.



Finally, to calm us down after all that, here's something I sometimes listen to just before shutting down the computer. Yes, I know, I'm Jewish, but that doesn't mean I can't like Ave Maria, especially when Juan Diego is singing it.

Always Listen to Your Mother, Part 2

So I had the opportunity today to go ALONE to Target. That may not sound very glamorous but when you've been the sole parent of an almost 4 year old for over a week it sounds WONDERFUL. So I got in the car, the one with that doesn't have a CD player, thinking, what am I going to listen to? So I fiddled with the radio to find the Saturday Afternoon Broadcast. I heard the very end of an ensemble, like 1 second, and then... 3 knocks on a door. Then... a doorbell. Even before the doorbell I knew what it was, but the doorbell told me WHERE and WHEN...

Yep. Barbiere from the Lyric. John, Joyce, Nathan. The finale of Act 1 for my drive to Target.

I took my time in the store, and heard the very very end of the opera when I got back in the car. Like, after each person sang his or her little piece, and then the curtain calls.

So I called my mother. The first words out of her mouth: "Did you listen to the Saturday Afternoon Broadcast? Was that not wonderful? What talent! What a fabulous cast! I cried three times. THREE TIMES!" She went on and on about how great it was until I could cut her off to say that yes, I heard it, and Oh, BY THE WAY, MOM, I WAS THERE!! Not at that exact performance, but I saw the same cast a few weeks later. I was like, "Remember when I went to Chicago? That's what I saw! From the 14th row! It's even better live!! That tenor, the Almaviva you heard? He and I are friends... He invited me backstage... I met them all..." and she said, "We have a terrible connection, you're echoing, I can't stay on the phone it's too annoying."

Nice. Maybe she's trying to give me a hint...

What did I say in a previous post?


Always listen to your mother.

My Best Work Yet

That's relative, of course. Like, on a scale of bad to worse... Fun with slideshows.

Largo Video

By the time I put this one together I was an old pro, ha ha.

Video Video, Yes We Have A Video!

Three so far! Just for fun I put Juan Diego Florez' name in the tags, although I didn't mention him in the description. It's not about him... for a change. Gee I hope he didn't feel a twinge in his throat when I typed that last sentence...

Anyway... We have this:



And this:



And finally, how could I NOT do this:

AAAHHH I can't post it because YouTube is undergoing site maintenance. Oh well you'll all have to wait and wonder.

Placido Domingo Sings a Duet... With Himself

This is cute.

How I Saw Nathan Gunn In His Underwear

I realize that there's just too much to write about to put it all in one long post, so as the events of the past week seep from my short term to my long term memory I'll try to get them down.

I decided that there's no reason I have to write about the trip in chronological order, so let's just jump right in. And I'll try to keep it semi-professional and mature, but once I get going I can't make any promises...

So the opera... I had the concierge at the hotel take my picture:

He even gave me fashion advice: Hair down, not pulled back in a barrette.


So down I went, trying not to slip on the marble floor in my heels. Took a cab to the opera house to save my feet as well as my shoes.

There were two signs inside the front door of the opera house, one warning that there will be gunshots during the performance, and this one:

So put on your disco shoes and try not to have a seizure...









Got to my seat and had to take a few more, all time time expecting some official to tell me to stop. The opera house is gorgeous.













The opera was FABULOUS!!! The scenery was amazing - bright colors and clouds, and the costumes matched the scenes. Everyone looked wonderful.

John was great as Almaviva. There were times, of course, when I was sitting there in my 14th row seat wondering what it would have been like to have Juan Diego that close, but that doesn't mean I was disappointed. I just... wondered.

And then Nathan. Oh. My. God. Figaro's Largo aria... they wheel out the "shop" and he's asleep on a cot on a loft. One leg is out the window. The other I think is on the floor. And he's wearing nothing but underwear. Gulp. I had my binocs focused! He pops out singing and gets dressed. Sticks his hand down his pants to arrange the business as he hits the high notes. The audience loved it. I almost fell out of my seat. (and just think, I shook hands with him later that evening.)
His singing and acting were perfect. That voice like melting chocolate just washes over you. It oozes out all sweet and rich and yummy. Ok stopping myself now... He was the perfect Figaro. He ran through those coloraturas and made them look easy. Like a piece of cake. Chocolate cake with a gooey warm chocolate center. Oh wait I said I would stop...

Joyce was great too. She played Rosina as a sort of petulant teenager. And her voice - WOW. It reverberates through your entire body. That's one of the things I love about live opera - how visceral it is, the sound washes through you and you feel it as well as hear it. It's why it can move me to tears sometimes. Although at Barber they were tears of laughter.

John was great as Almaviva - so funny. As the music teacher he sounded just like a sheep or goat, and he did this ridiculous little jump in between some of the lines. It was hilarious. And of course he did Cessa like it was nothing. Made it look easy. Beautiful light tone, rippled through all the trills, coloraturas and whatever they're officially called like he was out for a stroll.

Everyone left the theater with a smile on their face.

Then... in true teenager fashion I felt pretty smug squishing past the people at the stage door because I was "on the list." Very juvenile, I know. Heh heh.

I was hovering in the hallway by the dressing rooms when Nathan came out to leave. He turned to go the other way from where I was in the hallway so I called out to him, told him who I was and that I was Ricardo's friend and he came right over. Ricardo, if you recall, is one of Nathan's students, and he had emailed me earlier that week to tell me that he told Nathan I was coming all the way from NJ to see him. I couldn't let him leave so I said, "I just HAVE to get a picture with you, is that ok?" And he was like, Sure, let's find a spot, and we went into John's dressing room. John took the pictures. Well first he pushed the wrong button on the phone, then one shot was blurry so we had to do another, then of course I wanted one with the real camera and luckily he noticed that the setting was for landscape so he had to change that... and the whole time I'm there with Nathan's arm around me, holding me pretty darn tight. Like pressed into his side. I was like, holy sh!t I'm standing here with Nathan Gunn and his arm is around me and mine is around him and I can't think. He was talking to me about Ricardo and I was just all smiley and, "Uh huh... oh yes, Ricardo, he's great, uh huh...."

Seriously he was so cute that I was a bit star-struck and couldn't do much more than smile and try not to giggle. He just kept smiling right back and making the most wonderfully intense eye contact. I seriously felt like I was 15. If he had asked me to come on tour with him to do his laundry I would have said, "Do you want me to separate the colors? Maybe iron your underwear?" Then his wife sent him a text message to come home so off he went. Oh well. I gave him the CD of those live recordings from all over the place and told him that there were lots of live recordings online. I wrote a little note with it too, a dorky stupid note because, well, that's me, and I mentioned all the live stuff online and that I can tell him how to find it if he wants. Of course I gave him no way to contact me... even though technically he already has my email because we've already exchanged a couple, as well as a message or two on MySpace. He seemed really thrilled when he saw it was a CD of himself.

I gave John the book and a CD of Barbiere from San Fran opera that he did with Nathan. He was funny, he said, "You were much more outgoing last time, you seem so shy today." I was totally making fun of myself - "I'm just a little star-struck... you know... just met Nathan... it'll pass..." Must be tough being one of the stars and having everyone go ga-ga over the other guy.

I met Joyce too, and she was really nice. Her niece and nephew were there, I'm guessing he's about 5 or 6 and she's about 3 or 4. They were upset that she and John kissed at the end and she was explaining to them that they didn't really, it just looked like they did, and the boy kept saying, "But you're married," and she kept saying, "So is John - it's all pretend, it's ok." It was very cute. I gave her a recording of a recent Cenerentola she did. She also seemed thrilled to have it. Plus I gave her the earrings I made for her. I posted pictures of them a few posts back. She said that the timing was perfect because recently all her jewelry was stolen. How awful is that???? I happened to have a pair of "backup" earrings in my bag because I couldn't decide which ones to wear that night, so I gave those to her too, explaining that I have all the beads and can make them again, so she wouldn't feel bad. She was wearing a really nice, chic looking dress - I should've asked her where she got it. Joyce, if you read this, I loved that little dress you had on!

Then John, his friend Larry and I went out for a drink. The nearby pub was closed, and Larry and I happened to be staying at the same hotel, so we walked there. Yes, I ended up walking in those shoes all the way back to the hotel. We had fun just talking and joking - I won't go into details here because I really just want to get this post up.

There will be more posts about this as more details pop into my head. Like how when Nathan was leaving and he put his hand out and I took it and he sort of slid his hand out as he walked away... yeah John there's a reason I couldn't talk after that. I'm surprised I could still stand.

Seriously, how old am I?

Let's repost that picture.