Traviata! Slatkin is the Difference

Early responses from friends confirm----- that Leonard Slatkin is the catalytic enzyme to gel this group.
Don't miss this opera. Especially if you are new or sort of like opera. Like a perfect creamy omelet in your mouth, you will recognize perfection.
PS Don't applaud until the end of the act. This is not Broadway. Opera is not a participative sport. It is to be absorbed and savored by in-breaths--- held as you listen and feel the flavors.
More to come- Linnie

MAGIC at the MET Opera

Once in a season, if you are lucky, it all comes together--the singers, the score, the conductor, the director and set designer, and the audience.
Passover at the opera was just such an alignment. Oh. My. Ah. Ooo.
And who would have guessed it would be the season premier (but 953rd performance at the Met) of La Traviata. Joe Green's sappy score about true love and a consort, an 1880 Pretty Woman without Gere and Roberts.
Honestly, I sat the last half in the overflow room, hearing the commentary on satellite radio and watching on HD wide screen. Ripping, still. The auditorium temperature cooler than the nose-bleed section, and the savvy audience better than the humming tenor sitting next to me the first half in the bleachers.
Catch it---Leonard Slatkin (just marvelous)conducting, Paris sets by Franco Zeffirelli, and memorable James Valenti's debut at the Met as Alfredo.
Usually it is Wagner and James Morris. Tonight it was a French story, sung in Italian, a Romanian sorprano, and a tenor born in New Jersey!
Amazed...love wins.
More to come- Linnie

Mary Queen of Scots-Lineage as Art

This is the room in the Edinburgh Castle where she gave birth to James VI if Scotland, and when here sister Elizabeth I died, he became James I of England. Because of him the Bible was translated into English, King James Version. Peace was finally made between Catholics and Protestants. And everyone began to read.

Loch Loman--Interpreted

Two prisoners in a cell. One condemed to die says he will go home to Scotland(all Scots do when they die, he believes) via the low road, death. The other will live to go home- the high road. And that is the song--

You take the high road and I'll take the low.

And I'll be in Scotland before you...

And that's the song. Worldwide. Even Chinese schools teach this song in their English studies.

Edinburugh--Great Spires

The land is soggy. Barren rocky hills. So look up. That's where man put the beauty. More to come- Linnie

HIGHLANDS-High Tech

On the Isle of Sky, small villages share outrageous scenery and one phone booth.
More to come- Linnie

Huge CHAGALL Free

Two mural-sized paintings grace the Linclon Center Plaza on cloudy days. The curtains are drawn on sunny days. Just inside the Met Opera. Or see them at night from inside the building.
Secret: Russian born French painter, Marc Chagall (1887-1985) visited the Met for the installation in 1966. Unable to face a great white wall in the orchestra rehearsal room, he found scaffolding and painted an explosive impromptu mural, 2 stories high. You have to join the orchestra to see it!
Secret #2: West Side Story was filmed on the proposed Lincoln Center site, delaying the razing of the area for the new construction in the early '60's.
More to come- Linnie