Despite the heat, the show goes on
I’ve just returned from the Ash Lawn Opera Festival expedition filled with the sort of contentment one only gets from eating a good dinner outdoors in enjoyable company, listening to promising young sopranos sing of love turned to suicidal despair, and wallowing unabashedly in melodramatic emotion. In other words, it was a great evening. My companions and I agreed afterward that we hoped the evening’s Cio-Cio-San has a full-time career ahead of her (and I liked the Suzuki quite a bit as well, but then, I’m a sucker for mezzos of all descriptions, as regular readers will have undoubtedly guessed).
Also, Ash Lawn — which was James Monroe’s estate, and is now run by the College of William and Mary — is scenic in the extreme, laid out with an eighteenth-century landscaper’s fondness for perspectives. You get a view of the fields around Monticello and all the neighboring vineyards along the way there. And, after sunset, bats come out and occasionally swoop and flutter past the stage.
If only it hadn’t been the hottest evening of the summer — one can only imagine how hot it must have been for the singers, who held up very well, considering they must have been roasting in their costumes. Everyone flocked to the concession stand for ice water at intermission, sweating profusely all the way. No matter. It was worth it.
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