Endings and Beginnings

The days are just packed. Packed I tell you!

Friday I brought Alex to the ice-cream social. He was shy at first but after running around a tree five hundred times he finally warmed up. He even spontaneously broke into song, causing the artistic director of the opera to turn his head! He also told a bunch of people that he wants to be an opera singer, and just like in the video here, launched into Pa pa pa.

Saturday Jim and I went to see Die Zauberflote. It was great. The three ladies had matching sidekicks - "ladies in waiting." The girls had matching costumes with their lady - it was really cool. Papageno was hysterical - really really funny. He entered from the house and sang his first aria from the aisle. He couldn't see the conductor and he kept losing his place with the music. Otherwise he was great. Everyone was. The three spirit boys were played by three women from the chorus. They wore these Harpo Marx wigs and white or grey pajama-like outfits that I later heard were ordered from a clothing catalogue for gay men. Hmm. Pamina was great. I actually got a little weepy when she was singing to Tamino and he was keeping his vow of silence.

Then that night was the final Romeo. It was fun! We did our bit and then hung out in the green room. I brought a bunch of old Opera News magazines and a few bags of gummy worms. And those gummy worms were a hit! If I had thrown them to the floor I think people would've dove for them. And once again we had our hoods down for the curtain call.

This evening one of the guys who lives locally had a party at his house. It was the first time I really interacted socially with a bunch of the chorus, and it made me sad that I didn't have the opportunity to earlier. The artistic director told me that his favorite part of the Romeo curtain call was my hair. I'm glad it made an impact! I may have written this before, but I wonder if the audience realized that many of the monks were women!

I became friendly with one of the guys in the chorus and listen to this - he took the toefl a few months ago so I asked him if he remembered any of the listening comp sets he had. He described one to me and I totally knew it because I had worked on it! That was pretty funny. He was just shocked when I cut him off and told him what the rest of the conversation was about! I also learned that he is a student of Nathan Gunn. He said he's taking one of his classes in the fall and will tell him that he met one of his fans in NJ. Whatever...