Musings

It's hot in the Bay Area. The weather conditions that are literally burning up Southern California are making for a balmy November weekend in NoCal. Some of my Red Cross friends have headed south to help with the fires - many thanks to them. My NoCal friends, meanwhile, are breaking out their summer clothes. Good thing K and I weren't fooled into switching to our flannel winter sheets or...damn.

Went to see "Boris Gudonov" at the SF Opera last night, starring Sam Ramey (no, not the horror film director) in the title role. I must be genetically conditioned to like bass voices because he had me when he started to sing. Amazingly, Sam is 66 years old. He's had an incredible career. The article in the program discussed the affects of aging on his voice, and how this might be the last time he sings the role of "Boris". I'm grateful I got to see him, and that I've seen him in a few roles over the years at SFOp. Some of his YouTube performances (including one as a toreador who loves the letter "L" on Sesame Street) are thrilling, if not priceless. I'm officially a fan.



So, is it shallow of me to enjoy opera so much in the middle of a meteoric economic crash, in a period when our presidency is undergoing seismic change (thank goodness), and when my work just laid off some longtime colleagues on Friday? Fiscally, these opera tickets are something Dad and I invested in at the start of the year. From a human standpoint, it's nice to have something to enjoy - especially my Dad's company as we approach celebrating his 70th birthday this December. I prefer to think that human experience is a collection of large and small events, positive and negative, and it's best to take it all in with equanimity, an open mind, and gratitude. I am grateful for my friends, my family, and opportunities to support and value them, whether that's by spending an evening together at the opera, or writing them a recommendation on LinkedIn.

Brussels Weekend 2: Teh Googles are watching me

They detected I'm in Belgium and gave me google.be results. They even changed my Blogger options so I had to choose between "Blog maken" and "Aanmelden" to make this post! Auuugh! I feel so geotargeted.

Anyway, I wanted to write about my weekend, mostly undistinguished except for significant stomach troubles and a glorious trip to the opera to see Handel's "Giulio Cesare in Egitto". My 10 euro ticket got me entrance to a lovely small European-style opera house, and my legs got me up the stairs to my seat. Along the way I bought an 8 euro program that consisted of two beautifully bound books, one filled with the synopsis in four languages (the Brussels standards of French and Dutch, plus English and German, super-bonus!) and about 4 different articles about Handel and the opera in French and Dutch, and bilingual cast biographies; and the other with the libretto in the original Italian, French, and Dutch. What a bargain!

From my seats I couldn't even see the supertitles, but they wouldn't have helped anyway. They were in French and Dutch, of course! Thankfully I'd done some research online and knew the gist of things. The music was truly beautiful, and the production what my Dad would call "eurotrash" - very modern, and stark, and black-and-white. Super-bonus: there were three counter-tenors onstage that night, instead of the predicted two, each with a distinct style and carriage. Neat stuff. It's very incongruous for modern audiences to hear such high-pitched voices and think of them of heroic; we're just conditioned otherwise. Audiences invariably titter when they first open their mouths. And then stop, if the singing is good enough.

Since my stomach had been a bit touchy all day, I contented myself with a quick waffle snack before the performance. Waffles and opera, a good day!

Cross-Dressing Weekend!

Aw come on folks, it was Pride weekend in SF. No, we did not cross-dress for our birthday party (although now that I think about it, that could have been fun...). We had a pile o' people and a jolly good time and a very cute cake on Saturday.

Sunday I went into the city to have brunch with the Dads and watch a matinee of San Francisco Opera's production of Der Rosenkavalier. It was fantastic. Three sopranos singing some beautifully lyric music by Strauss. Just lovely. One of the leads is a classic "trouser role" where a woman dresses and plays the part of a man - in this case, Octavian, the young lover. Even more amusing, Octavian cross-dresses as a serving-maid to dupe the annoying clod Baron von Ochs.

All of this as punctuation to Pride weekend. It was amusing to visit the opera mezzanine (where many folks go during intermissions for a smoke or breath of fresh air) and see all the attendees using their opera glasses to gawk at the heaving throngs of Pride dancers - still going strong into the afternoon, the heavy OON-cha OON-cha OON-cha bass beats only barely masked by the opera house's stone walls.

I was a bit depressed by the opera, as it's all about how the "older" woman realizes she must make way for young love. Not a great weekend for me to be hearing about how the 30-something-year-old woman was feeling "old". Not even if it WAS beautifully sung.

This Thursday: Don Giovanni, Dad's favorite. I've never seen it before.