pre-opera tail gate

Last night Nathan and I showed up early to have a tail-gate picnic, our first time embracing this S.F. opera tradition. We shoved our outdoor folding table and folding chairs into the car, packed up a bottle of wine, a thermos of esrepsso and lots of food from Whole Foods. It was fun - sit there in the parking lot, with the mountains all around, eating cheese and bread and grilled portabella, and seeing all these other people doing the same.

Peter Grimes

We saw our fourth opera in three weeks last night. As Nathan says, when you see the opera this often, it stops being a hobby and becomes a lifestyle. Of course it is about to stop being a lifestyle as our next and final opera of the season is about a month from now. This time we saw Peter Grimes, an English opera about a psychologically troubled fisherman in Suffolk and what happens in a small community when tragedy strikes.

English operas are interesting - English isn't exactly as pretty-sounding as Italian and it is a little weird to actually understand the lyrics. To be honest though, I depended on the subtitles a good deal anyway because comprehending lyrics is not my strong point. Often Nathan will love (or hate) some song because of the lyrics, while I am completely clueless as to what they are singing about unless they happen to sing with crystal clear and slow enunciation.

Anyway, I have similar trouble comprehending opera lyrics in English. So when the e-libretto went all flaky during the second act, it was as if Ellen Orford's character was singing in Gaelic for all I knew. Sure I caught some words - just like I catch some words in Italian operas as well. Plus I am not exactly used to hearing words like "fisticuffs".

This is one of those operas where it is a bit of a struggle to not leave before the third act. But this opera was amazingly good if you kept at it, and battled the forces of sleepiness. I highly recommend seeing it in August, when the curtain time is a full hour earlier. When the characters just start singing about the bad state of affairs in a slow dirgeful way, it is hard to not to succumb to your desire to close your eyes. But the third act was more forceful and dramatic, and perhaps the caffeine I drank in copius amounts during intermissions finally kicked in as well, because i had no trouble giving it my full attention.

The actor playing the title character was amazing - his role is so different from most opera leading roles. He was a big, kind of clumsy guy who you had the feeling was just not meant to be a fisherman. The actor had recently played Lenny in an operatic version of Mice and Men, and there were many similiarities in the two characters. He is also reminding me of the big dentist McTeague:

McTeague's mind was as his body, heavy, slow to act, sluggish. Yet there was nothing vicious about the man. Altogether he suggested the draught horse, immensely strong, stupid, docile, obedient.

McTeague, Frank Norris

That was my impression of what Peter Grimes was like before his apprentice dies at sea. And like McTeague, Grimes descends into anger. Grimes becomes an angry man during the course of the opera - he is angry that the town gossips about him, angry that life dealt him a bad hand, angry that he doesn't have enough money to give Ellen the life she deserves.

His first fishing apprentice boy died of thirst out at sea and he was acquitted of any wrongdoing in a hearing. The local community, a character in its own right, was highly suspicious and rumors flew around town about him, about how he murdered the boy despite the ruling. Peter can get a new apprentice as long as he lets a woman help look after him, so Ellen Orford, Peter's would-be love interest, and widowed school-marm, volunteers. The new boy shows up with Ellen during a very stormy night after an arduous journey. Peter bursts in from the storm, and immediately drags the boy out to his hut despite the huge storm raging outside. This pisses off the townsfolk, who are all at the tavern where this scene takes place.

They decide to go after Peter, mob-style. Peter and the boy leave his hut and the boy accidentally falls off the cliff that collapsed near the hut recently. Another accident. Once the crowd learns of this a few days later, when Peter returns to town in his boat, without the boy, they assemble a bigger, nastier crowd. The local retired sea captain tells Peter to take his boat out of the harbor and sink it. Peter sang the most amazing song in the third act - the range of emotions and the his voice was full of pain and rage. Often you don't notice the acting very much in the operas, or it is just adequate - but he was a great actor as well as gifted with a beautiful voice. The poor guy - he obviously had some mental issues - hearing voices in his head, for one, and had a tendency towards violence, but you also got the distinct impression that the apprentices died accidentally and not by his hand. But the crowd was unforgiving, and Peter had no choice but to take the sea captain's advice and sink slowly into the dark sea.

Peter Grimes Performance Dates: July 23, 27; August 5, 11, 17

Barber of Seville

We saw the Barber of Seville last night. It was a highly entertaining, hilarious, and musically creative opera. There were also many familiar musical moments that I had never before known were from this opera: this snippet from the overture and "Figaro, Figaro, Figarro!!!" for example.

The music ranged from Spanish-style serenades to four part rounds.The plot is basically another love story - Count Almaviva is serenading Rosina, the young, beautiful and wealthy ward of a nasty old doctor, Dr. Bartolo. Dr Bartolo keeps her inside and away from men at all times though, so this makes it difficult for the count. Plus the doctor wants to marry Rosina himself.

Enter Figaro, the friendly, neighborhood barber who does everything from shaves to teeth-pulling to helping arrange elopings. He helps the count come up with silly costumes and personas to gain access to the Bartolo residence. Hilarity ensues as the Count masquerades as a drunken soldier waving his sword around and claiming he must be quartered at the Doctor's house. He addresses the doctor as Dr Buffalo, Dr Barbaro, and so forth. The Doctor gets increasingly agitated. This costume doesn't work out in the end, so the Count tries pretending he is the substitute music teacher for Rosina. This works better, though the original music teacher shows up halfway through the lesson to much confusion.

The zany plot keeps up till the final scene, when the Count and Figaro have snuck into Rosina's bedroom, where she learns his true identity and they embrace (yes I neglected that the count pretends to be Lindoro, a poor student). They go to climb out the window again, but the ladder they climbed up is gone. Then the marriage notary shows up, to marry Rosina and the Doctor, but the Count and Rosina get married to each other instead. Then the Doctor rushes in. He accepts that he has been tricked, and that he practically forced them to get married because he had removed the ladder from the window and were stuck in the same room as the notary. Something like that.

The cast was very strong- Count Almaviva sang in a beautful tenor, plus he played a mean guitar while serenading Rosina. He also got to have a lot of fun with his various disguises - drunken solder, a nasal music teacher, etc. Figaro was a rich and strong baritone, and he was constantly hamming it up for the crowd and had the stage all to himself. Rosina had a great voice as well, but she didn't strike me quite as much as the others. Perhaps she was just outstaged by the outrageous antics of the Count and Figaro. All in all, this was a really fun opera and I won't hesitate to see this one again.

Santa Fe Opera The Barber of Seville Performance Dates: July 2, 8, 13, 22; August 1, 8, 13, 16, 19, 25

Traditional Rain Dance Ceremony

I carefully performed the traditional rain dance ceremony/cleansing ritual at high noon today - I ran in circles, waved a big water stick around, bent over, stood up, over and over.

I invoked the rain gods by ritually splashing my car with a high pressure stream of water. Then I did the cleansing ritual part by spraying my car with high pressure soap. Then I rinsed it off again, carefully circling the car with my water stick. Then I did a final ceremonial high pressure wax rinse, symbolizing what I do not know. Do not question the ritual. Then followed by another high pressure waving of the water stick, and then a gentle shower of water with the water stick, symbolizing the end of a rain fall. Then I dried the car and left.

I did a follow up to the ceremony once I got back to work - I cracked the windows of the car. I noticed most other cars are also doing this same simple move - thus practically guaranteeing a sudden downpour later this afternoon, followed by a wave of dust devils to "exfoliate" the cars inside and out.

Update: It worked. It's raining! Hailing, even! Guess the run-on sentence didn't ruin the rain dance after all... :-)

hot hot hot

So it was super super hot out yesterday when we got home. And so hot that even at midnight I was sweating upstairs, so I slept on the couch with the air purifier blowing air at my face. Then I saw today's forecast: Today Mostly sunny. Hot with near record temperatures. Highs 95 to 101. Southwest winds 10 to 15 mph in the afternoon.

NOOOOO!!!! Can't ...take...heat...

window shopping online

I've been surfing the web tonight looking at clothes. And now i want to go out and buy lots of new clothes. I thought surfing was supposed to take away the desire to spend money and make me feel as though I had been virtually shopping. Instead it whets the appetite.

Anyway, i noticed something just now after hours of looking for clothes online. Amazon has a nice little search feature that makes it easy to expand my search. For example, I was in Suits & Separates looking at Nanette Lepore clothing. Then I wondered, what else Nanette Lepore do they have? And lo and behold, there was a link: Any Category in Apparel, not just Suits & Separates. And it brought up everything easy as that. Let me assure you, it is not that easy on other sites.

Say I do something similar at Bluefly, like search for Theory in Suits & Separates. There isn't any way to see the rest of their Theory with one click. Instead I have to click on All Women's Designers, then click on Theory. The one less click is nice. It really makes a difference.

However, the big thing that Amazon has going against it is they just mix everything together. I don't want to see clothing from all these brands - I like ceratin brands. They need "lifestyle" options or soemthing. I like how Neiman Marcus groups designers into five categories, of which I immediately feel an affinity for the group "Contemporary" and confirm this by noticing that many designers I like are included in this grouping. So they make it easy for me to narrow my choices. Amazon may make it much easier to broaden my selection, but they do have a ways to go in providing some sort of editorial fashion work. However, I will probably end up buying whatever I need at a real store still - or as is my wont lately, to try it on in the store and then try to find it on EBay.

While i'm at it - where I like to shop in Santa Fe:(have I mentioned that it is too f*ing hot here to sleep?)

• Dust in the Wind (lame name, good clothes)
• Bodhi Bazaar
• The Banana (Republic)
• J Crew
• Goler - for shoes. And may I say - I miss Nordstrom...

toupee

Toupee or not Toupee? That is the question. What side will he come down on in this crucial question?

espresso cups

What does it take to buy an espresso cup around here? A lot, it turns out. After buying our new espresso machine we drove all over Santa Fe looking for some simple white espresso cups. We looked at Cookworks, but even their massively discounted cups were still way too expensive. Next stop Cost Plus World Market, which always comes through on the pottery front. They had very few espresso cups. One didn't have handles, and said Espresso on it in a silly font. The others had handles but had some ugly photo-design on them.

So onwards, to Tar-zhay. Target always has something trendy and cool these days. But alas, we could not find a single espresso cup in the store. Nathan was deeply disappointed in Isaac Mizrahi. As was I. Plus I couldn't even find the 300 count Egyptian cotton sheets that Consumer Reports raved about. I guess they sold out or something. As a final push to find an espresso cup at 6 pm on a Sunday, we stopped in at Starbucks in the same parking lot as Target. They do sell espresso cups, but 6.95 for a cup and saucer set. It seemed too expensive so we gave up for the night.

So last night, I finally ordered some cups from Crate and Barrel. They are squarish and 3.95 each. Of course, with shipping, they probably are more apiece than the Starbucks ones, but these have quite a bit of personality going for them.

This morning I realized that Ohori's probably has a good selection of cups - we'll have to check them out this weekend.

welcome la Pavoni

We need to welcome the newest member of our household, La Pavoni. She is the cutest little espresso machine you ever saw!

Note: the picture is from the La Pavoni website - I didn't want to burden them with my humongous loads of traffic. Ha ha. Here's info about the machine and a link to the original picture. We got it at Cookworks going out of business sale for 40% off. Not too bad.

Lucio Silla

We saw Lucio Silla this last Saturday night at The Santa Fe Opera.

It reminded me in some respects of Agrippina last summer - set in ancient Rome, heavy use of harpischord as the only accompaniment to many arias, generous use of castrato singers, and (this i only know from the program), heavy use of coloratura. That's when they do fancy stuff with their voices. And both were written in Baroque times. Although strictly speaking Baroque music transitioned to "classical" around 1750 - Lucio Silla was first performed in the 1770's.

However, I have to say I enjoyed Agrippina more than Lucio Silla, but then again, Agrippina was my favorite opera last season. The music in Lucio Silla was fantastic - it is Mozart, after all, and it always amazes me at how "Mozarty" Mozart always is. As someone who is fairly clueless about music I can't tell you what it is that distinguishes Mozart, except to say something like, "he seems to like strings."

However, the duke of Milan, who commisioned the opera, didn't choose the best librettist in the world. The plot was even thinner than that of Agrippina, or at least, less comic. In a nutshell: boy is banished from girl's town, boy gets reunited girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. The dictator of Rome, Lucio Silla, is totallly infatuated with Giunia, the young babe. But she mourns for her boyfriend Cecilio, who was banished by Silla. Turns out he is alive, and comes back. They reunite and are happy. However, Cecilio gets thrown into jail again and is supposed to die. He's a revolutionary after all. But then in the final scene, Silla decides to let them marry, and gives up the throne and becomes a regular citizen. And approves of his sister's marriage to this guy Cinna, who seconds before finally admitted to Silla that he is not his friend, but wishes he were dead.

The costumes were easily my favorite part of the opera. The women wore these HUGE bustles - big wire frames that normally would just accentuate the hips and make them look bigger - but in this case, they extended two-four feet out from their hips. The women were much wider (in their hips) then they were tall, easily. The men had these wider hips too, but in their case, it was actually just their clothing that stuck out - the hems of their robes or coats. they stuck out to the sides like pippy longstocking's braids. The main characters were all dressed up in this greatly exaggerated Baroque style, while the chorus and the four (male) dancers were dressed in modern suits and ties.

The protaganist, Cecilio, was played by a woman. The role was originally written for a castrato, which they don't do anymore. That is good. The role of Cinna was sung by a male soprano. The costumes definitely helped Cecilio look male - after all, to be female in this opera you needed hugely wide bustles. There was a funny scene where the four dancers dressed Giunia who was to appear before the emperor. She started off the scene in her slip, then the dancers dressed her against her will, since of course she would rather die than have anything to do with Silla. They brought out this big wire contraption that they slid over her head and down onto her waist. Then laid the dress over it like a tablecloth. Then wrapped a bustier thing around her torso, placed a blond wig on her head, and swiped some makeup on her. It was quite amusing, and provided a balance for the end, when the Emperor removed his huge outfit, wireframe included, and donned a simple black suit, to become just another Josephus.

I also loved the use of video in a modern performance art way. Silla was obsessed with Giunia, who by the way, everytime she saw him, told him how much she hated him and wished he would die. But that made him just even more obsessed with her. Anyway, in one scene, a huge video clip of her was projected onto the scenery. It was a zoom of her face, first of her looking downward with her long hair over her face, then swooshing her head up and to the side, flipping her hair away and smiling. Then it repeated, over and over. Later it was reused in a scene with Cecilio, who is also madly in love with her.

I thought that the staging was quite inventive and fun - something you need to do with such a thin plot. I have to say though, i needed a lot of coffee to keep me going through this one. I almost nodded off in the second act. I find it hard, when slightly sleepy, to focus on a single brightly lit character against a pitch black background. It makes me want to close my eyes.

Another fun part was reading about the initial staging of Lucio Silla, Mozart was but a young teenager at the time. He was commissioned to do the opera with his father by the Duke of Milan. About a week before opening, the character playing Lucio Silla dropped out, and the replacement wasn't so hot. He was a church tenor with practically no stage experience. Mozart cut his arias for the character in half, down from four to two. Then opening night the actor proved even worse than expected. He was so exaggerated in his movements that it looked like he was going to box Celia's ears in one scene and made the audience laugh out loud. This in turn upset the prima donna, who was off her game the rest of the night. This was further compounded by another actor requesting lots of applause everytime he came on stage to help him counter his stagefright. Mozart and the other producers had to spend the next day placating the upset prima donna. I like to imagine an acne-ridden teenage boy trying to calm down a large, highly preened and perfumed, theatrical prima donna. Oh yeah, and then it wasn't performed again for over 120 years.

Lucio Silla Performance Dates at the Santa Fe Opera this season: July 16, 20, 29; August 4, 10

Thor doing Nap Yoga

Thor was so cute sleeping upstairs in the loft, and I thought, why not share the Thor love with everyone?

Turandot was spectacular

Saturday night Nathan and I went to see Turandot (pronouce the 't' at the end) at the Santa Fe Opera. I belong to Intermezzo, this opera group for us youngins, and so got 50% off tickets for the season. Since this opera was mostly sold out when I bought tickets, I was "forced" to buy more expensive seats which were great - we were smack in the center of the audience. And no one tall was seated in front of me.

Right before the opera started our seat neighbors showed up reeking of pot. I can just imagine - "DUDE, lets get totally stoned for the opera!"

Anyway, moving on. The set was totally technicolor - oranges, yellows, greens, fuschia, bright green and purple. The comic relief, three colorful guys named Ping, Pang, and Pong, wore huge sill hats with things that looked like long springs or ostrich feathers sticking out of their hats. They moved with their slightest movement. They wore jester like outfits and were one of the highlights of the opera.

Turandot has a simple plot - it revolves around Turandot, the haughty ice princess and eminently eligible bachelorette of China, daughter of the Emperor of China, (may he live 10000 years). Her suitors must anwer three riddles to gain her hand in marriage or, if they cannot guess the riddles, get their head chopped off. Heads on poles decorated the stage for the first act - including the feather capped hat of the prince of Persia, the latest prince to fail the challenge.

Enter Calaf, prince of exile from Tartary, who falls in love with Turandot at first sight. He succesfully guesses the riddles. Turandot freaks out, so Calaf offers her a chance - guess his name before dawn, and he will die. ANyway, it all works out - she melts with his kiss at sunrise and falls in love. In fact, she declares to the kingdom - I know his name, it is....AMMMORRRRE!" (love).

The singing was superb - especially from the slave girl Liu, who is in love with Calaf and kills herself to avoid having to reveal the prince's name. Her voice sang these high clear notes so beautifully - it would be great to hear her in a larger role - she was exceptional. THe other amazing singer was Calaf himself, whose tenor was gorgeous. In the second and thir acts he had some solos that were incredible - rich and full of emotion.

Turandot was quite capable, and was truly wonderful in the duet with Calaf at the end - their voices complimented each other remarkably well. On her own though, I wasn't as impressed - I just didn't get a feel for her character, even though her character was fairly straightforward - haughty ice princess. When she melted though, so did her voice. Perhaps she did that on purpose - to show the blossoming or such of her character.

Anyway, this was a terrific opera, and I would love to go see it again. Our two favorite characters though will not be in the future performances - well, Calaf was played by our singer just for the first two performances. Liu is sung by one singer for July, and someone else in August. IT would be interesting to see if the other singers do as wonderful a job.

I haven't even gone on about the set, the costumes - both of which were wonderfully wacky, creative, and colorful.

band names

The other day on the drive to work, I was talking about how easy it is to come up with a band name, but hard to come up with a software product name. After all, band names can be easily come by by just reading road signs:

My favorite: Mandatory Truck Screening

That would be a great band name - someone should use it. And yes, we have weird road signs - government laboratory signs provide no shortage of inspiration.

Also, why is it that 80% of the huge Mack trucks never stop at the mandatory truck screening? Mandatory's meaning must have changed. I mean, there are always people at the screening point, ready to screen. They probably all are neighbors and just say on the CB, "Ron, its me again with more cement." "Roger, go ahead Steve" either that or it is way to easy to get a truck through.

hot! so time to ramble...

So the jeans have won the first round. Nathan tried pulling them up by the waistband while they were on me, but it just lifted me up. Hilarious. Even more hilarious was when I made Nathan put them on, after an argument about whose thighs were bigger. He couldn't button them either, but they fit better on him. I wanted him to wear them around the house for a while to stretch them out for me, but for some reason when I spontaneously broke out in peals of uncontrollable laughter at him in this outfit, he pulled them off. I'm going to try again in the morning when I am dehydrated and hungry and not hot as all get out cause it is 95 degrees out.

So instead I put on a very comfy loose dress and rigged up the air purifier so all the cool purified air comes blowing right up at me. Ahhhhh...

Also, I am working at my new 12 inch Alumninum PowerBook. I broke down Friday and bought one, and ended up with this shiny silver thing cause they were out of iBooks. It is like the sports car of laptops. I got the slightly older model of it (slightly slower processor at 1.3 GHz) but it is loaded with a SuperDrive, Bluetooth and of course jammed full o' RAM.

It is great having a laptop again - we went and hacked in a Santa Fe park Monday afternoon. This one mini triangle park has free wifi, lots of shady trees, and free parking. We brought Thor along and tethered him to our picnic table so he could explore safely. The park by the way, is the green triangle in center of this map link from Google Maps. It is easier to see on the road map, where it is the triangle formed by Paseo de Peralta, Hillside Ave and Hillside Ave again. The TriPaPeSide neighborhood, of course.

I was joking on the way home that we should not say we live in Espanola, but that we live North of Santa Fe, or NoSaFe. Hmm...just noticed that written out it is: No safe. That is what people like to joke about espanola. I guess I should work on it some more. By the way, Espanola really isn't all that bad.

I also said that Los Alamos could be West of Santa Fe, or WASP. oopsies, I meant WASF, of course.

jeans

So I've been ordering Seven for all Mankind Jeans off of eBay. I've had one definite success, one failure, and one "we'll see." The failure jeans were way too big for me. These new jeans today are ones i would have given up on in the store and have asked for a larger size. They are the jeans that just stop getting put on somewhere around your mid thighs. SO anyway, I'm sitting around with jeans mostly on, somewhat low-low rider and not zippable yet. I'm trusting that they will stretch just enough so I can actually wear them. I'm not sure if I will win this battle or not- it probably depends on how long I am willing to wear them in this fashion around the house for. If this works, it could be a new trend - buy jeans that you can't actually wear in the store!