Opera HD
Hey. I have to write a blog post tonight. I may have forgotten how. Oops.
I was also thinking today, with this blog prospect looming, that there are two kinds of days: days when you have lots to write about, and are pretty much too tired by Blog Time to view the task with any enthusiasm . . . and days that you don’t have lots to write about and therefore view the blog task with no enthusiasm whatsoever*. After several days of prancing around the landscape flinging interview links carelessly over my shoulder for blog posts like Isadora Duncan and scarves** I’m positively cracking at the seams with potential blog stuff . . . which will have all leaked away by tomorrow through those gaping middle-aged seams. So let me make a grab at the most recent which is also to say the reason I’m starting writing after frelling midnight and writing at midnight is not a good thing. Especially not on a Saturday night before service ring Sunday morning.
Peter and I went to our first Live at the Met HD tonight—which means opera at your very own local cinema, supposing your cinema is cool and classy*** enough to offer it. http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/broadcast/hd_events_template.aspx?id=11964
I’m a pretty much instant slavering convert† and am planning to buy tickets for everything tomorrow††. Tonight was Anna Netrebko††† in Don Pasquale and it was delicious. ‡ Next month is Don Carlo. In January . . . mmmm. And it goes on.‡‡ And . . . I need to remember that live live, as opposed to streamed-from-several-thousand-miles-away live, is its own thrill, because for a quarter what a ticket to Grange Park Opera costs, or about a sixteenth of what a ticket to the Royal costs including frelling train fare‡‡‡, not only can you just slope off to this thing in your hellhound-hairy jeans§, but at this theatre anyway you get a free glass of fizz. And as cheap fizz goes, it’s rather good fizz. I was sitting there tonight minding my own business and drinking my cheap fizz when a little old lady§§ came and sat down beside me and started telling me that her favourite colours were pink and black. Oh! I said. Mine too! Whereupon we looked each other over carefully. She was wearing a variety of browns and dark reds§§§, and I am wearing blue and purple. One meets such interesting people at the opera. Even if they aren’t wearing black and pink and have hellhound hair on their jeans.
And speaking of interesting people . . . I met a bell ringer.# And Peter met a bridge player. Neither of them was wearing jeans, although my bell ringer’s tweeds were pretty hairy.
But Anna and Mariusz (and Matthew and John) couldn’t see my denim knees. They just sang away. And sang and sang.## I love opera. I love the Met Live. ### I can’t wait for Don Carlo next month. And if I don’t go to bed now I won’t be able to find my bell rope tomorrow.
* * *
*Although there are two further subdivisions of this latter kind of day: when it’s been lovely and peaceful and you’ve got just normal type stuff done like you’re a normal person^ . . . and when you’ve been bored silly.^^ Oh, and a third kind: when you’ve been writing your brains out and have no words lef . . . . In such a situation you have to take out a mortgage. And those beggars at OED^^^ central are mean.
^ In honour of Bell Friend, whom we are going to call Tilda+, I hoovered the floor last Thursday before she arrived. Hoovering is normal, isn’t it? There are also times when I can do without being normal.
+ Whom I suspect of being a clean freak.= Her car is terrifyingly clean. And I’m pretty sure I saw her grow pale when she was obliged to climb into Wolfgang. Although that may have more to do with the hellhound noses that immediately shot over the seat back. Ooooh! People at our level! —I don’t understand why hellhounds don’t love the car. Maybe we don’t have enough visitors. Maybe I should clean the car. No. Let’s not get drastic here.
= Hi, Tilda! It was at this point I decided not to use your real name!
^^ Since I don’t do bored silly, I have to be compelled by circumstance. Filing. Taxes. Hoovering.
** Only more carefully and not at high speed
*** Yes. I said COOL. And CLASSY. You don’t like opera? You poor thing.
† In spite of the serious cramp in both neck and back from trying to lie down in my seat. We were too close to the screen—these were the seats I could get—so I slithered down and put my knees up against the (empty) seat in front of me: which you can do for several hours when you’re fourteen. Not so much when you are fifty-eight. I’ve probably wrecked Rajan’s good osteopathic works this morning and now I’ll have to be crippled for the next month till I see him again. Having stapled me to his insufficiently padded treatment table, clomped all over me with hob-nailed Official Ostepathic Treatment Boots™, he was testing for bits that hadn’t been Fully Penetrated and remarked in tones of astonishment that I had very good hip mobility. I tell myself that being ministered to by people who are a lot younger than I am is going to happen more and more. But I could do without the astonishment. Let me demonstrate how fast a little old lady can turn cranky.
†† It will be a good thing to do tomorrow because I am clearly going to be very short of sleep. And I still have an interview and a half to write. Gaaaah.
††† http://www.annanetrebko.com/ However this is my new hero: http://www.mariuszkwiecien.com/index.html
‡ In spite of the back ache. Never mind. I’m sure a good ring is all I need. And speaking of the walking wounded and the potentially therapeutic (or not) effect of tower ringing, I received this email a few hours ago from one of the friends I have contributed to the downfall of by helping introduce them to bells:
After a good morning’s ringing outing, on getting out of the car…I shut the end of my right forefinger in the car door. And my first thought was ‘oh gods, now I might not be able to ring for Sunday service tomorrow’.
So tomorrow may be the story of ‘Nine-fingered Alicia and the Ring of Doom’.
‡‡ Placido Domingo in Gluck! Bryn Terfel in Wagner! Yeeeep!
‡‡‡ I’m one of these tedious people who doesn’t want to go at all if I can’t have a good seat. My idea of good is . . . front row. Although preferably not bang behind the conductor. Conductors are too wiggly.
§ Which if you’re planning on spending the evening with your knees higher than your head, is a good thing
§§ I should perhaps say another little old lady. One thing that was not totally cool about the evening is that I was about the youngest person there. I saw two women who were probably in their forties, me . . . and a lot of bus-pass holders, including those who’d been renewing their bus passes for quite a few years already. One of the many, many things I get cranky about (as per the PW interview) is the whole ‘oh, the younger generation(s) are hopeless’ thing. But I do worry that bell ringers and opera goers are an ageing and endangered population. Er. Populations. I don’t know a lot of opera-going bell-ringers. Although Niall has been known to go to the opera, led on a short chain by his loving wife Penelope.
§§§ And really great striped socks with glittery edges.
# It does happen. Although we were amazed to see each other. I didn’t think bell ringers went to the opera! we said simultaneously.
##Especially Mariusz.
### Why has it taken me YEARS to get this far??? Okay, in my defense, I’ve seen most of the Met HD on Sky Arts. And my own cheap fizz is better cheap fizz. But the cinema screen and the sound . . .
comments
Please join the discussion at Robin McKinley's Web Forum.