sopranos and tenors...

 I went to the opera today, the Metropolitan Opera that is.  The Metropolitan in New York that is, and I attended in the easiest possible way.  A friend and I went to the Opera at the Coldwater Crossing movie theater.  Every six weeks or so the Met broadcasts an opera live to movie theaters all over the world.  Today it was "Fedora" an Italian opera (soap opera) that takes place in the late eighteen hundreds.  It involved a Russian princess, a French spy, a murdered lover, a variety of other characters and the longest dying scene I've ever seen.  The music was lovely and the singers were excellent.  But what made it even more fun was getting to watch the scene changes during intermissions (very detailed) and listening to interviews with several of the singers.  Add to that subtitles and comfy seats (Coldwater Crossing has those nice big recliners) and popcorn if you want it, and it's hard to imagine a better way to go to the opera.  In case you're wondering if I've ever been to a live opera in a real opera house, as a matter of fact I have.  Some years ago, on my first ever trip to Italy, my same opera-loving friend and I went to La Scala in Milan. It was amazing.  We had front row box seats and a view out over the whole house.  That was great, but the seats in that historic theater, at least in the front row of a box, were miserably uncomfortable.  I think they were made for little tiny people who didn't need any knee room.  I was excited by the fact that they had small translators on the railing in front of the seats.  I was looking forward to hearing the Italian (we were in Italy after all) and reading the translations, only to discover that the opera that evening was "The Rakes Progress" and it was sung in English.  It was good but...