Furniture? We don’t need no stinkin’ furniture! We have bel canto!
I’m still furnitureless, and the apartment still smells of smoke, but the landlords have promised to send someone around tomorrow to check the vents and figure out what else needs to be done. Which is good, because I was having visions of myself going slowly mad, "Yellow Wallpaper"-style, trying to find the source of the phantom smoke.
But I have just discovered the Sunday Opera Matinee on WTJU, and Jennifer Larmore is singing glorious Rossini arias, from Tancredi and La Donna del Lago and Otello, into my rapt ears. (Isn’t she just stunning? I wish I lived in France so I could see her as both Alcina and Orlando in Vivaldi’s Orlando Furioso this fall. But I will settle for looking for her all-trouser-roles-all-the-time "Call Me Mister" CD.) So, overall: life is looking good.
(On a related note: I see that the Met radio broadcasts are still going to be happening this season. Hurrah! There’s my Saturday-afternoon schedule for the winter and spring.)
Here’s one of my biggest regrets: I actually had a ticket in my hand to see monteverdi’s cena furioso (I’d never heard of it, but it’s Monteverdi, my hero, and judging by the title it sounded fun) for the opera festival in Aix-en-Provence when I was studyign there. I missed it. I gave it to a fried who was less-concertly-advantaged; she was going to go with another friend (someone to whom I had been trying to teach the importance of being on time to things). Well, without my guidance, the other friend made them both late, and they weren’t allowed into the opera at all. Thus I had a ticket, and nobody benefited. I’ve always uttered a little sigh about that. Call me crazy, but I love early Baroque opera.
Jennifer Larmore is just to die for, isn’t she? “Call Me Mister” was the first time I ever heard her and I’ve loved her ever since. Jennifer in Orlando Furioso…wish I lived in France too..