We drove to Logan this morning to see the last performance of The Flying Dutchman at the Eccles Theater at 1pm. We met up with old friends, Sue and Dave S. and Anne N. The performances were superb and so were the visuals. Opera is a satisfying mix of all the arts when it's done right. Logan has become a major music center in the state, thanks to Michael Ballam and the ever buoyant and talented Craig Jessup. It was a completely happy experience.
Then we had dinner at Anne's house where we learned that Dave had made three tents. He tested the first one by taking Sue backpacking into the mountains where it began to snow hard. "It was freezing," Sue said. She went to look for wood to make a fire and expected to see a tent standing when she got back, but it looked like a hankie pulled tight at all corners and they lay under it on the ground. "A tent should have at least three sides," she told him.
"It keeps the snow off," Dave said.
"People can see us."
"What people? We haven't seen another person all day."
Sue didn't speak to him for the rest of the night and the whole drive home.
Don't you love marriage?
It was Dave who long ago taught me the song, "Drop-kick me, Jesus, through the goalposts of life."
A perfect day. I need a smoke.
I have to say, if it isn't "done right," I don't even call it opera! (Then again, most of what passes for Broadway musicals these days is neither musical nor Broadway.) And "a satisfying mix of all the arts" it is. You put that so simply and perfectly.
ReplyDeleteWhere have you been all my life? (I wish I were a better blog-lurker. I am compelled to comment. It's stupid of me, really, but) this post deserves a spot in The New Yorker. Or something. That's all. And thank you for writing.
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