Home from Thanksgiving: the Birgit Nilsson remix
WTJU’s Sunday Opera Matinee has already prompted enough posts here that I’m instituting a “Sunday opera blogging” category just to talk about whatever’s being broadcast. I missed most of this afternoon’s broadcast, having spent a good part of today in transit back from a Thanksgiving visit to my native city. Getting there was something of a trial — I miss living on the Amtrak Northeast Corridor, where if you set out to take a train, you can reasonably expect it not to be four or five hours late — but the rest of the trip was splendid. Thanksgiving dinner at my uncle and aunt’s house included a collective nitpicking, over pumpkin pie, of Peter Jackson’s treatment of the Helm’s Deep scenes in The Two Towers. (I love my extended family.) I always feel more grounded after seeing Baltimore again, and this time I got to spend an evening with my friend T., who’s living there this year, chattering about music and city life over Proletary Ale at The Brewer’s Art near lovely and historic Mt. Vernon.
So — to return to the subject at hand — late this afternoon, after an epic voyage back by train and connector-bus, I caught a cab home from the station. The driver turned out to have his radio tuned to the Opera Matinee. “I don’t know what they’re singing about,” he said, “but it sure sounds good!” I said that I listened to the same program most Sundays and asked if he knew what the opera of the day was. He didn’t know, but just then the announcer came on and said they were featuring Birgit Nilsson singing Wagner and Puccini. So we listened to her for the rest of the ride. It completely made up for the three-hour bus trip between D.C. and Charlottesville. (Though once we got out of the bumper-to-bumper traffic around D.C., the view from the bus window was quite pleasant, and we arrived in C’ville just in time to see the mountains turning various shades of indigo and purple in the setting sun.)
Next week they’re broadcasting Handel’s Giulio Cesare. Hoorah! I don’t know which recording, but I’ll be sure to post something about it.
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