Author: joe bliss
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Coda: Journeys and Destinations
Mornings after opera I would find a cozy coffee shop to write and write about what I heard and why I loved it. A personal celebration, a memoir where my modest life overlapped with the world of opera written completely and only for myself; at least until a global pandemic turned everyones life upside down.…
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#101 Florencia En El Amazonas
A voice shouts from the balcony with unbridled sponteneity just before Florencia begins. “Viva la ópera en español.” We are mere feet away from the podium and close enough to see Yannick Nézet-Séguin turn with a big smile and to lift his arms in mutual appreciation with this enthusiast both acknowledging the welcome and refreshing…
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Prototype Festival: Chornobyldorf
After 101 operas Chornobyldorf was a needed jolt of theater, less a palette cleanser and more like a hit of acid. A vibratory fresh start. I’m reading Catherine Lacey’s “The Biography of X” now about a fictional avant-garde artist from the NOHO neighborhood of New York City in the 1970’s and Chornobyldorf feels like a…
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Prototype Festival: Angel Island
The last person rescued from the Titanic was named Wing Son Fong. After being pulled from the ocean him and five other Chinese survivors were detained, denied entry, and sent back toward the ocean (him to Cuba). It is a fact from the opera Angel Island that hits me with a hundred questions. I had…
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Prototype Festival: Adoration
Prototype is a yearly New York City festival known for putting contemporary stories on stage that mix the language of opera with modern technology. It’s exhilarating. Opera is an art of parts: costume, voice, chorus, stage, light, orchestra, dance… and something that prototype does so well is knitting the parts into a cohesive and very…
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#100 X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X
The words from Glen Ligon’s artwork still haunt me all these years later. Not at all like the typical polite prints on the suburban walls I grew up, with Adam reaching out to God’s finger or a poorly inked Monet. Glen Ligon’s artwork stopped me in my tracks every time I went to the Philadelphia…
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Interlude: I Wrote an Opera!
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? This speculative question comes from the title of Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel about artificial intelligence. Specifically about androids who are so sophisticated they can move thru society as fully human. More than clever word play “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” raises provocative questions about the future of…
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#99 Simon Boccanegra
A rain soaked Saturday and I’m late for the opera. I run for the train when the glasses I have tucked into my shirt collar begin to bounce like a contrarian to gravity. At the same time the coffee in my hand begins to slosh back and forth. The combination of centripetal force and the…
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Unholy Wars
Unholy Wars is a musical theater piece about love and hate and how those conflicting emotions sometimes overlap in undesirable ways. The creator and also the tenor for today’s show is Karim Sulayman. This is clearly a passion project for him and throughout the show he walks an amazing line of celebrating “Western” music, while…
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#98 10 Days in a Madhouse
The opera begins with the reporter Nellie Bly posing as a patient in Blackwell Insane Asylum. It is 1897 and the tenth day of her confinement. She tries to convince the doctors that she is sane, but they won’t believe her. Kiera Duffy singing the role of Nellie stresses every atom in the auditorium and…
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Interlude: Tell Me A Story
It wasn’t all about the music, the pizazz, and the flaunting oboists. It was also about a voracious appetite for story. How many movies and TV series have I enjoyed since Saturday morning cartoons and waking up early to catch The Smurfs and Dungeons & Dragons; and before that how many nursery rhymes with elves…
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#97 The Royal Shepherd (Il Re Pastore)
The Perseid meteor showers just rocked Rooster State Park. One after another, every thirty seconds or so, bright gliding jolts of universal perspective pass above our heads to confound and conflate science and magic. The Perseids arrive the same time each year as predictable celestial fireworks and always a part of my summer trip to…
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#96 Die Frau ohne Schatten
I land in San Francisco knowing only one thing about the evening ahead; The Woman without a Shadow is composed by one of my favorite opera composers, Strauss. With my sweetheart beside me, I know I’m in for a night of awesome surprises. The first surprise widens our art school eyes – a set designed…
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#95 The Barber of Seville
I miss having wavy dark hair and all the little delights that came with it: The smell of fruited shampoos, handfuls of goop, the heated metal of a hairdryer, the vanity of pulling a comb out of my pocket to admire my reflection in a window, the ritual of going to the hair cuttery for…
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#94 Der Fliegende Holländer
There’s something precarious about sheets on a clothesline. A hubris in spite of their humble attachments. Shapeshifting ghosts; always just a gale away from being ripped loose and landing on the neighbors Great Dane. Man Ray’s painting reminds me of the one my grandma strung from Mrs. Connors fenced mulberry tree to Mr. Tolands honey…
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#93 Ariodante
On days I feel weary of contemporary pastiche and self conscious dissonance I hope that a Neo-Baroque movement will take hold and really lean into sincerity and beautiful voices again. I leave every Handel opera with ears full of delight and tonight is no exception. The Curtis Institute of Music Just pulled off an unforgettable…
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Don Giovanni
The Academy of Vocal Arts reminds me of the Barnes Foundation as a wonderfully intimate space in the area that for years most people didn’t know existed; but once discovered becomes many peoples favorite. It is about as close to the source of music an ear can get without actually being a performer. It’s penetrating,…
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La Boheme (in reverse!?)
Today’s production of La Boheme will begin with the sad ending and end with the hopeful beginning. Wrap your head around that for a minute. It’s La Boheme, in reverse! The intent from director Yuval Sharon is for the audience to experience La Boheme thru the clarity of hindsight, to appreciate the small moments and…
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#92 Champion
Grandpop used to ask us to put our hands on his upper forearm and then he’d flex his bicep until our hands felt like they were between two pieces of steel. He called himself “the vice,” and would boast about betting young guys fifty bucks if they could knock him down with one punch. The…
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Interlude: Welcome to the Sousalarm Club
If you enjoy the horn and drum of a good march, tune in and tap your feet to WRTI’s Sousalarm on weekday mornings at 7:15 A.M. The Sousalarm has been part of my morning commute for years and depending on which mile marker of I-295 it begins I know if I can relax or need…
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#91 Norma
The moon from Lohengrin has come back for an encore. What rituals might be going on behind the drapery to shrink the moon and transform the stage into a forest full of druids and priestesses? A last minute vocal warm up maybe, a loose stitch secured, a case of butterflies let loose, a Hercules who…
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#90 Lohengrin
Courtesy of the Met’s rush tickets program, we score tickets for the first tier, Row B. We have had some great seats, but before today I didn’t even realize they ever offered first tier seats. If you can put a price on it (which they do) these seats would otherwise cost $350 dollars. I’m exhilarated.…
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#89 Don Pasquale
I arrive early for the 8:00 performance of Don Pasquale excited to visit the Academy of Vocal Arts for the first time. My stomach drops however to find an empty lobby and be told the opera began at 7:30 and not 8. I’ve never been late to an opera before and am terribly embarrassed. Thankfully…
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#88 In Our Daughter’s Eyes
In Our Daughter’s Eyes was the last opera I saw from the Prototype festival and I think the strongest from a magnificent group of shows. Michael Joseph McQuilken and Nathan Gunn created a complicated character who reminded me very much of men I have known. Truly flawed delinquents who became expectant fathers, a new role…
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#87 Trade
The opera Trade takes place in a hotel room in Dublin. The room is a deliciously lifted diorama who’s color shifts to reflect changes in time and mood. The world beyond the hotel room is never seen but its presence and attitudes are felt in every syllable. It is a traditionally conservative world the characters…
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# 86 Mary Motorhead
Mary looks a little unhinged in her black Motörhead concert shirt, but finally I have an opera to share with my old metal friends from high school. I haven’t thought about them for ages, those friends perennially hassled for their obligatory long hair and presumed allegiance to satan, but to me they were always the…
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#85 Note to a friend
Warning: This post contains references to suicide that may be disturbing. If you or a loved one are experiencing suicidal thoughts, call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 and please talk to someone today. In the top drawer of my desk at work I keep two things. Notes of thanks from students, and the…
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#84 Fedora
The champagne snuggled within my inside pocket is gripped by the security guard. She considers for a moment, but then lets me thru. It is New Years Eve after all. After that brief moment of hesitation, we are under the chandeliers, in a cavalcade of fashion for the premiere gala event of Fedora, and while…
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Interlude: But is it Opera II?
When the first photographs appeared people thought that maybe “painting was dead.” Who needs a painting of something when you could just take a photograph? Of course painters did not see death, they saw opportunity. Opera faces a similar challenge contending with competing technologies. It also has to contend with its own history. One has…
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#83 The Turn of the Screw
What a treat to run into Christopher Mattaliano at the opera today and in Philadelphia of all places. He currently runs the opera company Orpheus PDX in Portland and is a big part of their thriving opera scene. I recognized him because in Portland he greets the audience and fields Q and A sessions. He…
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#82 Peter Grimes
The chorus chants the name of Peter Grimes in accusation. Again and again the name repeats and the chorus feels extra special tonight reminding me of the Mefistofoles performance. With a frothy passion they sing: Who holds himself apart Lets his pride rise.Him who despises us We’ll destroy.And cruelty becomes His enterprise.Him who despises us…
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#81 Idomeneo
People crowded the theaters in 1984 to watch the movie Amadeus, and once again the name Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was on everyone’s lips, the wunderkind. Even the scientists of the time said that listening to Mozart would make babies grow up smarter and an entire generation of mothers sat around with headphones on their bellies.…
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#80 Medea
For the opera Medea I take a walk to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to find an artwork featuring the myth of Medea. While the steps and interior of the grand entrance are a sight to behold, if you’ve already been here then I recommend trying the secret entrance downstairs with shorter lines, a quiet…
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#79 Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich didn’t notice when Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin left the concert hall. For the music was still far from over. The opera he walked out on was Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and the next day the Official Communist newspaper brutally trashed what would be Shostakovich’s first and only opera. By 1934 friends and collaborators…
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#78 Otello
On Sunday afternoon a monastic hush swept across the audience before Act II. At the precise moment the lights dimmed to their darkest, the voice of a three-year-old could be heard deliver a cheerful “Bye-byyeee,” that bounced around the theater in a crisp sharp F. The acoustics lifted her innocent exit all the way up…
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#77 The Fall of the House of Usher
Edgar Allen Poe’s famous tale of the macabre is an allegory about the interconnectedness between people and things. That our joys (and in this tale, miseries) are not just within us but also inhabit the people and objects around us. My first experience with this story was watching a made for TV miniseries in the…
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Tito (2nd Production)
Let loose the applause, for tonight I performed in my first opera. During an interactive production of La Clemenza di Tito re-written for a modern audience, I was persuaded to play a member of the press and present a question to President Tito during her press conference: A thread throughout my blog has been to…
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#76 L’orfeo
After a long year teaching, it is Portland I come to heal my spirit. A slight disappointment travelled with me this year though because Portland Opera has switched to a fall/spring schedule, but two things got me feeling better. First, I get to visit my opera loving cousins here and two while watching a morning…
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Interlude: Costumes, inhabiting the Character
After dressing up for the Wagner operas and then seeing the outrageous outfits in Ahknaten it really got me thinking about how clothing can change a character. To help my art students appreciate Art a little better, I think it helps if they can feel some kind of empathy or sympathy for the characters within…
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#75 Albert Herring
Albert Herring is not so much a chamber opera for me as it is a seek-and-find for the cause of the marching melody sure to become my ear worm companion tomorrow. I have a great view of the timpani, bassoon, and bass clarinet tonight, and with a stretch the harp and flute. I believe the…
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#74 Scalia/Ginsburg
What a refreshing and delightful evening of opera, and I’m still laughing. Ginsburg/Scalia is a contemporary comic opera inspired by the relationship between U.S. Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The two judges famously oppositional in their interpretations of the constitution found common ground in their shared humanity and reverence for democracy,…
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# 73 Hamlet
Theater can be magic and Hamlet is no exception. During Act II the characters all exit leaving an elegant room empty but for a conspicuous dark rectangle cut out of the ceiling. We see nothing but it and the top of the curtain. Slowly the ceiling begins to lower and we see Hamlet standing on…
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#72 The Rake’s Progress
The comedian Chris Rock once quipped that a man is only as faithful as his options. This opera begs the question, is he right, are we as good as we think we are or do the circumstances of geography and class just limit our opportunities to be amoral? Introduce Tom Rakewell, a nice country boy…
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#71 Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (The Merry Wives of Windsor)
At dusk the horses that work Central Park trot downward to the stables of Hell’s Kitchen. In an effort to beat the approaching rain tonight a carriage takes the corner at the light so fast, not only is it believable to me that you could be trampled to death by a horse, but before cars…
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#70 Rodelinda
The singers let loose their vocals like mellifluous acrobats. I have become such a huge fan of Handel’s operas (contemporary composers of opera seem to tilt the complexity away from the vocals in favor of the orchestra). 250 years ago was the age of castrati and vocals were the rage. However between the flying vocals…
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# 69 Ariadne auf Naxos
A giant gold frame surrounds the Met stage for Act II. Audience members who know their art history will undoubtedly make the reference to the famous painting by Titian. My favorite Ariadne painting is a little less grand. I found it with my art students on a trip to the Philadelphia Museum of Art on…
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# 68 Fidelio
Beethoven’s only opera is about a prison escape. A metaphor for most, a sad reality for too many. This production from The Heart Beat Opera Company brings a unique authenticity to the opera by inviting inmates held in real prisons to sing Beethoven’s famous choral section. For me it is the most effecting performance of…
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#67 Oedipus Rex
Thanks to histories most famous psychologist, tonights opera is always an open invitation to think about family, especially fathers and sons. While the oedipal complex may be disproved as an actual complex, it still works wonders as metaphor especially for artists. Tonights opera has me feeling nostalgic for family and the woods of my childhood;…
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Interlude: Inconsequential Journeys
The Hudson River beneath our living room is awash in a shimmering light that bounces off the ceiling and onto my book to transform the edges of each letters crossbar, stem, arm, and leg into improbable coastlines, each guarding a perimeter of endless possibility. This morning i’m reading N.K. Jemisin’s book “The City We Became”…
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# 66 Eurydice
Every step is a pounce. A leap. An act of defiance against gravity. In a gust of plumes, humble feather balls rise and fall like music notes on the shadow of a nearby railing. A second of wide eyed stillness, then action. Sparrows don’t walk to their desire, they hop-to-it. -coffee shop, pre-pandemic Ichi-go ichi-e…
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#65 Iphigenia
This new opera collaboration by jazz phenoms Wayne Shorter and Esperanza Spalding is set up to be a fascinating fusion of jazz and classical music with a stage-set designed by paradigm shifting architect Frank Ghery; I’m excited. Now if we can only get to Boston to see it. The plane at La Guardia presently is…
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Interlude: Opera, it’s all Greek to me
Coming to stand beneath a Greco-Roman statue in a crumbling square of Herculaneum I think about the dark ages that followed the fall of Rome. Zeus, his family of troublemakers, and the libraries of ancient knowledge misplaced like keys in the couch cushions. I can imagine this statue beginning with its Inauguration Day crowned in…
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#64 Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
We entered the Met at 6:00 P.M. and didn’t exit until 12:05 A.M. Wagner demands a lot from his audience, but the reward is so much more than a great opera, it is to experience the sublime in a way that can change the trajectory of ones consciousness, and if you’re not into that, there…
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#63 Fire Shut Up In My Bones
Charles M. Blow’s memoir Fire Shut Up in My Bones is brave in its honesty. The opera based on his book begins with Charles holding a gun with which to murder the man who molested him as a child. It then follows the moments of Charle’s life that lead him to this critical moment of…
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#62 Boris Godunov
I enjoyed not enjoying this opera. I appreciated that the Met performed Mussorgsky’s original composition. Later re-writes gift the audience with more chorus at the beginning and end with a fuller plot that balances the male dominated cast with some female voices – but that’s not Mussorgsky – That’s the re-write. I’d rather hear an…
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#61 Sun & Sea
Sometimes going to the opera is just like a day at the beach. The staging for Sun & Sea is unlike any other in what looks like Aliens scooped up a section of a beach mid-summer and plopped it down on the planet Brooklyn. Bright as July the burning bulbs on the sides of the…
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#60 Eugene Onegin
Ring the bells! We land in Santa Fe just in time for lunch. The airport is charmingly loaded with ornamental tiles, but after a no-frills flight all I can think about is food. Our Lyft driver chatterly describes some chili in town we’ve just got to try and before we even get to the hotel…
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#59 The Lord of Cries
I overlap my fingers into a cross – and hope. We are going to see our first opera in a year and a half. A year and a half is how long Covid shut down the world’s theaters, and just about the world’s everything else. Covid protocol still makes leaving the house these days feel…
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#58 Agrippina
The decadence of Ancient Rome has not been forgotten. We are in present day New York on Cupid’s day, and we’re celebrating with a fine dinner before tonight’s opera. Agrippina is up there with my favorites from this season. She, is a satire that encourages us to laugh at the wealth, privilege, and power of…
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Interlude: But is it Opera?
I talk about opera a lot. Too much probably, but I can’t help myself, I enjoy it. Good friends listen, try to meet me half way like the good people they are and will bring up a musical theatre work they’ve seen, like Wicked. I want to jump up and down and scream, “it’s not…
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#57 Porgy and Bess
It is an early winter evening. Thru a veil of snow everything in Hell’s Kitchen, New York feels out of time. A horse and carriage enthusiastically prances by to call it a day, then vanishes into a gauze of snow. The staff in the Starbucks where I write in the mornings sweep up grey shadows…
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#56 Wozzeck
I take the subway up the Hudson River today for a visit to Grants tomb. Once upon a time this was one of the most visited tourist destinations in the country, but no longer. Everyone must still be nursing hangovers from last nights New Years Eve parties, the morning is Walking Dead quiet. I am…
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#55 The Queen of Spades
Lise Davidson sings tonight. Powerful. I’m surprised the roof of the Metropolitan Opera survived the evening, held up maybe only through some restraint on her part. It is her debut here and the up and coming soprano has the deepest capacity I’ve ever heard. Her throat must be forged of brass and crystal. No waver.…
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#54 Der Rosenkavalier
There is only one flaw in tonights crystalline production of Der Rosenkavalier, and it is delightful. Three giant dogs are walked onto the stage held by long leashes but one of them is completely distracted by the audience. This good boy cannot stop himself, he is so enthralled by so many potential new friends. He…
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#53 Akhnaten
For this one I do two things: I read Phillip Glass’s biography where he travels the world, studies with Nadia Boulengar (lessons in counterpoint), drives a cab, and develops his polarizing repetitive structures. When I close the book, I like him. Second, I recall once again, my amazing trip to Egypt: Luxor is still being…
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Interlude: Sex, opera, and tacos
Walking down 10th avenue I feel the ennui that invariably follows weekends of complete satisfaction. I wonder aloud to my companion. “Do you think there’s more to life than sex, opera, and tacos?” She considers this for a skip of two heart beats then looks at me with a smile. “I came for the tacos.”
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#52 Le Nozze di Figaro
Ask me to take your picture and I will move the sun to get the lighting just right. The German couple in front of us hand me a disposable camera. It’s the kind of camera I used in high school that needs winded. I frame them in the viewfinder *Click* their smiles and outfits like…
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Orfeo de Euridice (2nd production)
Interesting night at the opera. I am really excited to share this opera with Chaltin because it is one of my favorites from the Portland Opera. This night however is damned from the beginning. The giant metal staircase didn’t attach properly and shook violently. It was not used, and eventually pulled back up into the…
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#51 Manon
Me and Chaltin left the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris on a sunny morning in July and walked past the church of St. Sulpice. We didn’t know it at the time but it is in there that the Chevalier des Grieux heals his broken heart. I think he’d be better off grabbing a beer with the…
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Turandot (2nd production)
Did Puccini ever visit China? No. He had to learn and appropriate ideas from secondary sources like newspapers and music boxes to imagine a fantasy China. I have visited the real China, well at least the tourist trodden. My trip was an art teacher’s dream. To see the Terra Cotta Warriors (Emporer Qinshihuang’s life sized…
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#50 Macbeth
Fate is a giant ocean. No matter how ambitious, at the best, for a brief moment there is a gasp of fresh air and a glimpse of the stars before being enveloped again. This production begins with the foreshadowing sound of a stormy sea. There is danger in ambition. It is like a storm that…
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#49 Semele
We enter the party like Bacchus’s rowdy Maenads. Rose colored canaries bookend the winery’s testing vines tottering in the wind and attracting mealy assassins first to spare the grapes. The sky is filled with shooting stars. It is another after-party at the Chaddsford Winery in Chester County, Pennsylvania. The official party may have ended but…
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#48 A love of Three Oranges
During the intermission I receive a text from a friend in the theater asking, “Is this good? Am I missing something?” I reply that there is always something to love in opera and to search out that element whether it is a sound from the orchestra, invention on the set, the beauty of a voice,…
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#47 In the Penal Colony
Yesterday, I was in Paris. Today, Portland, Oregon. Very excited to be going to hear In the Penal colony with my cousin Rachel. The tickets came with complimentary drinks and snacks before the show. When we go inside the theater it is very small and the singers just a few feet away from us. The…
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# 46 La finta giardiniera
Garden gnomes. So many garden gnomes. It’s good to be back in Portland. Just watch this intro and tell me you don’t love opera and better opera in Portland. This young Mozart opera is a delight and opens with about 50 garden gnomes on stage. The plot is absolutely ridiculous for this light hearted comedy.…
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#45 Nixon in China
I visited China once believe it or not. I still don’t believe it as I’m fairly certain I’m the only person to visit there from my home town, and maybe the only one from there who ever will. Ahead of my trip there was a lot of xenophobia on the news painting China as the…
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# 44 Roméo et Juliette
I’m very excited to take my family to their first opera. It feels like a really special reunion since I haven’t seen them for a while. I have to put my hand in my pockets to refuse my Aunt who is trying to give me money for the tickets to which my dad’s wife comments…
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#43 Dialogues Des Carmelites
In hindsight Marie would probably agree that the Reign of Terror that precedes the French Revolution was probably not the best time to become a nun. Robespierre is not a fan of the Christians. When Marie says she is strong enough to pass the tests to live the life of an austere nun, she is…
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La Boheme (4th production)
I said it once before, I’m never going to see 101 operas if I only see La Boheme. I love my sister though and I can’t pass up an opportunity to share this one with her. This will be her second opera with me. It is a cloudy, breezy, and cold beginning of May. Winter…
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#42 Gotterdammerung
This is our last day of The Ring Cycle and I’m going to miss it so much. It feels like a once in a lifetime opportunity. We kicked this adventure off a year ago and today we will finish this sixteen hour epic. The Met feels like our Valhalla. Gotterdammerung is incredible – it is…
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#41 Siegfried
The horned hats continue to be a a hit with the crowd. I hear comments like, “Nice horns,” or “I’m obsessed with your hat,” and the more demonstative woman who asked if she could touch it and began rubbing my head all over like she was on ecstasy. I take my picture with some other…
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#40 La Clemenza Di Tito
If you ride the Amtrak enough it’s easy to appreciate the chorus of complaints it receives. The conductors on the other hand are the best. Wearing a tall dark navy uniform todays conductor jokes with a young boy a few seats up from me that if he didn’t have a ticket he would have to…
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#39 Die Walküre
“Ho jo, to ho!” Walking past the Henri Moore sculpture at Juliard, a man walking the other direction sees our horns and sings again, “Ho jo, to ho!” which is the character Brunnhilde’s war song cry. Everyone outside is bristling with energy when out of the blue a hip young woman in a pink patterned…
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#38 Faust
We have a free weekend between Wagner’s The Ring Cycle. So what’s an opera fanatic to do? We decide to drive to Washington D.C. to see Faust at the Washington National Opera Theatre. It is a morning of syrup and Orchids, 90 mph into the sunrise we arrive at Founding Farmers in time for pancakes…
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#37 Das Rheingold
My love for Kit Kats has been the thing of rumor and conjecture ever since the infamous break room theft of 2002 when my Kit Kat mysteriously disappeared. Gimmee a break. The villainous degenerate has never been found, and everyone knows I’d rather lose a river full of gold than a Kit Kat. They are…
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The Ring Cycle
Wagner’s The Ring is big, ambitious, and arguably the greatest work of art ever created. You heard me Michelangelo. It is a single 16 hour story told across four operas: Das Rheingold, Gotterdammerung, Die Walkure, and Siegfried The Ring Cycle begins for me and Chaltin on a rainy morning when I go to pick up…
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Interlude: Audiences
The Orchestra audience is absolutely the most polite and respectful to the players and other audience members. These are people coming to hear the music they love. The Ballet audience is sexy! Half of them look like they used to be dancers themselves, svelte. The Opera audience?
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#36 Falstaff
With a swift kick, the walls on stage wobble and I think; what won’t a diva do to steal a scene? In this wonderful moment the diva happens to be a horse. It is always a thrill to see live animals on stage at the Met.* The music for Falstaff is so vital and immediate,…
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#35 A Midsummer Nights Dream
The train is very late! We arrive barely in time for the wobbly violins that begin Britten’s A Midsummer Nights Dream. There is no opera without a great Puck and tonight we have one in the actor Miltos Yerolemou, who plays the dancing man on the popular TV series game of thrones. He is uncontainable!…
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#34 Rigoletto
Opera is full of tragic characters and I hear that Rigoletto might be the most tragic of them all. I have an exciting day ahead of me though before I will learn just how tragic. My morning begins with a surprise text. “You in NY bro?” My sister is here with her kids to see…
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#33 La Fille Du Regiment
“Rataplan, rataplan, rataplan…” To drum beats we thrust our punching fists in victory. This whole day is a victory for Art and for us. We catch a really comprehensive Warhol exhibit, and then off the subway almost get knocked over by some street art nibbling at the President. Would Andy have done a Trump? There’s…
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Don Giovanni (2nd production)
We are opera glasses ready. The orchestra tonight sounds amazing – the singing also with sopranos who pierce the air like shafts of light in darkness and tenors who sing to completion empty a whisper that dissipates into erupting applause. I always find the double ending really interesting. The first climactic finale feels like a…
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#32 Bluebeard’s Castle
A loud moan comes from the family circle and I don’t want to think about what they’re doing. He wears long blonde hair and coat like he’s out of an Anne Rice novel. What he really needs is a raincoat and to be on 42nd Street. If any opera were going to inspire an asshole…
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#31 Iolanta
My good friends Corky and Kathy are in New York and suddenly this big city feels less lonely. They are visiting this weekend to see a different opera, Carmen. I spent my first years teaching sharing laughs with these two opera loving workmates. We used to go to the Academy of Vocal Arts to hear…
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#30 Adriana Lecouvreur
What starts as rain quickly turns and by time I arrive the Metropolitan Opera is the center of a snow globe and my charcoal coat is white. Seeing two operas on one winter day is ambitious, but I have ventured into this formidable weather once again to see the potential fireworks of two ‘battling divas,’…
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#29 Pelleas Et Melisande
What do you get if you take away everything that people love about opera? Pelleas Et Melisande. No big arias, no patter songs, no soaring coloratura, and no big crescendos. Still, Debussy’s composition along with Yannick’s attentive conducting has me on the edge of my seat. I never lose interest or focus. The music undulates…
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The Magic Flute (2nd production)
Merry Christmas opera family! We wake up early to feel the romance of the past. Once a year they bring out vintage subway cars and actually run them. I love this. Next year I’d like to dress up like a 30’s gangster, but probably won’t. I’m feeling a little like Santa after pancakes and Just…
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#28 Otello
Gustavo Dudamel’s dark curls bounce. Boito and Verdi’ adaptation of Shakespeare’s Otello is released from his baton like a wizards wand. With dynamism and rich textures, he brings forward some of the best singing I have ever heard. It is the last day of school before winter break and I’m looking for some time away…
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#La Traviata (2nd production)
It must be the holidays. Peppermint sticks soak in hot cocoa that is being dutifully guarded by poinsettia colored balloon dogs. It’s the party of my life, but I can’t help but wonder if Violetta would think so. I think she would have to at least concede one nod of approval as we dance beside…
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#27 Les Pecheurs de Perles
I can still hear the “plop-plop” of coins as they hit the waters surface. I loved when my Dad threw coins into the deep end of the pool. I’d dive, stretch my hands toward the bottom, and compete with my cousins for the glittering presidential treasures. If I was lucky I could snatch one mid…
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#26 Gianni Schicchi
The final opera of tonight’s Il Trittico is Gianni Schicchi and thank heaven, it’s a comedy. Just like dessert must follow broccoli and Brussels sprouts or Spring after a long Winter, we really need the funny after watching Il Tabarro and Suor Angelica. The hilarious story of Gianni Schicchi elaborates on a minor character from…
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#25 Suor Angelica
The second opera from tonights Il Triticco is Suor Angelica. “Senza Mamma” is one of the most lyrically crushing arias in opera and is delivered achingly tonight by Kristine Opolais. The song is a message to her dead son who after being separated feels he died from lacking her touch and kisses; and worse, without…
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#24 Il Tabarro
Il Tabarro is the first of three short and loosely related operas from Puccini’s Il Tritico. It is followed by Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi We spent the day of the opera slipping around Central Park like a couple of tourists, even going ice skating. It was a day made for winter coats. Michele from…
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Interlude: A Mandarin Duck loose in Central Park
A chilled curl of frozen cucumber floats in a lemon and mint vodka. It’s a chilly November in New York, but this bar is beginning to feel like a spring garden in Napoli. Chaltin puts her drink down and asks, “What duck?” I swirl a single leaf of sage on a foamy cloud of gin…
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#23 Mefistofole
Who are you then? I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good. Goethe ‘I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, the sinners are much more fun…’ Billie Joel Someone must have made a deal with the devil for row F orchestra seats. Luckily that someone is…
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#22 La Fanciulla Del West
I feel like I’m at the O.K. Coral tonight, not because of the set, but for the audience’s behavior. There’s a lot of talking, candy wrappers, and picture taking; It wouldn’t surprise me if some of these barbarians brought spittoons to spew chewing tobacco! The opera is set in the old American west with a…
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Aida (2nd production)
The souls of men and women, impassioned all. Their voices rise and fall, battle trumpets call… Verdi Cries, 10,000 Maniacs My feet feel the sand; and my hands the water of the Nile. The setting for Aida is Egypt and I can still feel and hear the journey like it was yesterday. It’s the kind…
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Interlude: Can you wear shorts at the Opera?
To skip ahead; yes. You CAN wear shorts to the opera! Unequivocally, YES. There is no dress code for the opera. If you like to dress up, it can be a great opportunity to do so, but it is certainly not required. SHOULD you wear shorts at the opera? That is another question entirely and…
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# 21 Lucia di Lammermoor
Just before the made scene the stage is moody and stark made of snow, shadows, and darkness. Then comes the sound. I lean forward from the Academy of Music’s worn warm red velvet seat. What on earth am I hearing? I pan the orchestra for this strange sound. It is an auditory oxymoron, both pleasant…
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#20 Orfeo de Euridice
The sun looks like a small pink pimple on a pearly purple sky. Fire consumes the Oregon forests and haze distorts all in its path. The Gorge burned the summer before too and the trails are still indefinitely closed.The weather has alarmingly changed in my lifetime. The opera we are about to see will take…
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#19 La Cenerentola
The overture is jubilant and soon enough the vocals are twirling and rising into an Italian Bel Canto.* Nothing is more fun. I’m excited Portland is playing Rossini’s version of Cinderella since I just saw Massenet’s version. My biggest surprise is that there is no magical fairy god mother in this one, no glass slipper,…
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#18 Tosca
Chaltin sits near the revolving door at The Metropolitan Opera like a pillar overgrown with flowers. She waits while I stand in line for tickets behind a foreshadowing red velvet rope. Blood will spill before the evening is over, hopefully not mine. My slouching under-confidence is mocked by her perfect posture until the voice at…
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#17 Cendrillon
I blame William Wegman’s dogs! Chaltin has no interest in seeing this opera with me. Her only reason is that the Weimaraners really turned her off. The Met has a giant dog dressed like Cinderella hanging on its facade and inside the gallery is also full of his dogs dressed up like other characters from…
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#16 Carmen
Philadelphia, 2018 This is going to be my sisters first opera. I have no doubt she is going to identify with the passion of Carmen. We could both raise some hell a few decades ago. She is now the warm-hearted matriarch and ‘mamma bear’ to everyone she knows, so I’m so happy she stole a…
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Interlude: Juilliard Senior Dance Production
Our former student is going to school in NY. An accomplished trombonist, it is his generosity of spirit and willingness to engage with the community that makes him such a notable alum. I would have balked if a former teacher reached out to me when I was in college. I needn’t have worried, I was…
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Cosi fan tutti (2nd production)
Some people can pull off a mustache, but every ‘Movember’ it’s clear that most people cannot. John Oates, Charlie Chaplin, Salvador Dali, Groucho Marx, and Magnum P.I. wore some of the most iconic mustaches of the last century. But, before them were masters of disguise Ferrando and Guglielmo of Mozart’s cosi fan tutte. The terrible…
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#15 Luisa Miller
Violins swirl into an orchestral storm. It foreshadows the tragedy to come. Footsteps. Lightning. Poison? Verdi strictly writes for a narrative and there are things in these noises. Just over three minutes in, the orchestra quells to nothing but a soft solo clarinet that clears the air for Luisa’s melody, and I will hum it…
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#14 Elektra
Furious expressionism, Greek references, and erotic dots. Ingredients for a Greek Tragedy for sure. The Armory Show this morning turned out to be a nice preview for tonight’s opera. WHAT – A -NIGHT – AT – THE – OPERA! I think I’m sweating. I am completely overwhelmed by what I heard tonight. Yannick Nézet-Seguin held…
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#13 Madama Butterfly
My only memory tonight are the red petals falling from curtain. Petals soundless falldarkness obscures their landing There is only fear I’ve been teaching Haiku to my Art students in an effort to get them to look a little longer and deeper into the paintings from art history. Haiku of course is a form of…
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#12 L’elisir d’ amore
I hate Valentine’s Day. February 14th can be a cruel spotlight when you’re single. This year is better than most finding me on tour through an amazing Michelangelo exhibit at the Met with my friend Chaltin. There is a sculpture of Cupid here made by the maestro when he was 16. Clearly the same god…
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#11 Pagliacci
Leoncavallo’s opera is based on a true story from Naples, Italy. I haven’t taken one of those DNA tests, but I assure you my blood is full of olives and grapes because everyone on the bus in Naples when I visited Italy looked just like my grandpop. I just hope one of my ancestors wasn’t…
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#10 Cavalerria Rusticana
The opera begins softly with a sad chorus. Church bells ring. I am transported completely and it all reminds me of John Hersey’s book A Bell for Adano, that also takes place in Sicily and during war time. In the book a good hearted American officer attempts to help the town procure a replacement bell…
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Interlude: Opera Buddies
My new best friend has me thinking about the nature of friendships. The Buddhists say ‘like attracts like.’ I know too many people who look like their pets not to believe them. It’s natural to move towards things we like and away from things we don’t, but these friendships based on physical similarity can be…
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#9 Die Zauberflote
I drove from Oregon to New Jersey in four days and not just to see a new opera. I also have to get back to work. The drive was the vehicular equivalent of Rimsky Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee.” I arrive 16 hours before the first day with my tail between my legs having failed…
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#8 Cosi fan tutte
This is my first time back to a theatre since Panic at the Opera. My ebullient cousin Rachel, as supportive as ever, is here to help me back on the opera horse. I’m thankful and I’m having fun, but showing gratitude and needing help remains uncomfortably humbling… I prefer to be the helper. I’m front…
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Interlude: Trek in the Park: Portland, Oregon
Today I’m getting ready to see Trek in the Park (as in Star Trek) with one of my favorite people. My intrepid cousin Rachel, who has visited fifty countries, has dropped anchor in an old trendy port-town where the summers and the hiking are glorious. She lives with an equally awesome guy named Jerry who…
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Interlude: Panic at the Opera
I grab the counter and wonder if I’m going to black out. The cashier is spinning. This first attack happens in a supermarket on south street. Supermarkets are so full of sensory overload that buying cheese and tomatoes could make anyone a little dizzy now and then. I quickly feel better and I don’t give…
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#7 Don Carlo
Two tickets please. Tonight, I’m joined by my friend Aaron from grad school. A likable tall genius always willing to lend a hand or listen when our grad school family needs counsel. He is one of my favorite people and I regret we left grad school with too many things unresolved. Is the Argo the…
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Interlude: Graduate School
My Grandpop was an artist, and thanks to him art became my thing too. Ever since watching him paint flowers in his dining room I wanted to know the secrets of the canvas. When I finally try my own hand at painting, I lose myself for hours in the studio. I’ve heard actors say the…
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Interlude: Learning the Trumpet
You can’t trust the trumpet. It will drip warm honey into your heart sweet and sultry like Ella on a summer night, then in a moment turn sour. You can trust an oboe with your spouse, but not the trumpet. It’s all lips and spit on cold metal, how could it be anything but duplicitous.…
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#6 Don Giovanni
The Patco train that runs from New Jersey to Philadelphia is rarely on time. Unless I happen to be running late, then suddenly it is the Deutsch Bahn. Tonight. I wait. The train arrives ten minutes late and even though it is only a short 20 minute ride, I may miss the opening of the…
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La Boheme (3rd Production)
Well! We are never going to reach 101 operas if half of the ones we see are La Boheme. My workmates were going so I went along to share the evening with them, but came in thinking, alright I know this story and it’s not going to be nearly as epic as La Boheme was…
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#5 Lucia di Lammermoor
I wish I could remember the specific details of what grabbed my heart and soul so much this evening. Maybe it functions best as a mystery that will take 101 operas to solve. Whatever Angela and Michael and other performers did tonight, it was true magic. They turned this novelty of doing something new with…
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#4 Turandot
Turandot has been inviting me to see her for weeks. Banners of her face line Broad Street all the way from the Phillies stadium to the Ben Franklin sculpture atop city hall. Puccini’s heroine also beckoned from full page ads in the newspaper and in television commercials. My expectations for this performance are to the…
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#3 La Traviata
The saplings have arrived! The plants we ordered for work might still be in the box, but I can already imagine their potential. The garden outside my art class is destined to look somewhere between the Bronx Botanical Gardens and The Hanging Gardens of Babylon. These still boxed buds make me think about the hidden…
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La Boheme (2nd production)
La Boheme happens to be playing my second night in Verona. The goal of my blog is to hear 101 distinct operas. I will not count different productions of the same opera toward the goal, but I will see different productions and use them to learn more about this thing called opera. I learn a…
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#2 Aida
Aida happens on my second trip to Italy when I go BACK to see the Sistine Chapel. Missing Michelangelo’s Herculean masterpiece had gnawed at me something terrible. On this second trip I find myself in Verona where operas are staged outdoors in an old Roman Colosseum. Fresh off my experience with Rob in New York,…
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Interlude: The Voice of Sunny Italy
A year before seeing my first full opera with Rob, La Boheme, I hear a soprano sing under the romantic skies of Venice, Italy. A night train with sleeping cars and strangers wine takes me and my friend Juliana from Paris to Milan onto the romantic canals of Venice. It is summer, big blue skies,…
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Interlude: The Orchestra
Bugs Bunny sits at a piano. He wears a tuxedo with high collar. I expect something ridiculous, but then he begins to play and it’s wonderful. Thirty years later I’ll learn it is Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. Rob points out that like most people I have been a fan of classical music ever…
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Interlude: Everyone Loves Music
“Music was my refuge.I could crawl into the space between the notesand curl my back to loneliness.”– Maya Angelou. Elementary School: Dancing with Myself If I can get to lunch without a wedgie, benny hill, or wet willy this will be a fantastic day. I’m the smallest kid in my class and mocked for my…
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#1 La Boheme
My first opera happens on an unseasonably warm 50 degrees February 15, 2005. The day is memorable because the artist Christo has recently hung 7,503 saffron colored curtains above the bends and dips of Central Park and their color wavering through a grey winter are an irresistible lure for a visit to New York City.…