I’m supposed to be doing this as much for my benefit – to aid reflection – as for any reader.  I seem to be losing momentum.  Onwards…  there are a good couple of events worthy of an update.

In the vain hope that anyone is following, we last parted just as Carmen was looming on the horizon.  The production was the same reasonably picturesque but not terribly efficient affair it had been in previous incarnations.  Horses and donkeys were paraded; people abseiled in and out of the hideout; hoards of children did their thing in Act 1; and people made a great play of stomping about all over the tables at Lilas Pastia’s (word to the wise: if eating there, don’t scoop up food that falls off your plate, you don’t know who was last tramping, dancing or gyrating on that very spot, and I don’t think Lilas Pastia has a hygiene certificate).  Oh, and there was that naked-torso gymnast ostensibly there to entertain the crowds in Act 3, but also providing a pleasing diversion for us in our Balcony box…

I thought Alagna had more heft and body to his voice than I remember him having.  I came away quite impressed.  Maybe the hoo-ha with his wife has given him renewed vigour, but my recollections of him live are of a lighter voice.  I agree with the various people that have characterised Elina Garança’s Carmen as rather too shiny and glossy.  She did sound fabulous, and she must have been covered in bruises by the end of the run from being thrown on the floor so often in Act 3.  And whilst that was a tribute to her engagement in the drama, I did miss that earthy, vulgar, gritty tang that an outstanding Carmen has.  She was also unfortunate in that her predecessor (Anna Caterina Antonacci) could actually clack her own castanets, rather than passing up the honours to a man in a bow tie and DJ in the orchestra pit – I didn’t see his hips move once.  None of the others made quite that much of an impression on me.  I did so want to like Ildebrando D’Arcangelo’s Escamillio, but he was also a bit too mild-mannered, lacking that last ounce of heft which would have stood the character out from the crowd.  Ah well, it was an enjoyable romp.

At the Royal Festival Hall on Wednesday, a most curious confection was served up: Henk de Vlieger’s ‘Orchestral Adventure’ synthesised from the great orchestral moments of Wagner’s Ring.  The concert started with an interesting (and hitherto unknown to me) Scriabin Piano Concerto, which I couldn’t quite take in and follow but it was nevertheless a marker to come back to.  It sounded on first hearing like Rachmaninov shot through with lemon juice: rich, but with just a little more acid.  I will return… Yevgeny Sudbin was the pianist and I won’t attempt to comment – it’s not my particular study so I wouldn’t add anything insightful.  He played a Scriabin etude (so I’m told…) which was actually received with a stillness which I then realised had been missing from the concerto.  Interesting.

The Ring, reduced to a succession of bleeding chunks sewn together like a Frankenstein creation, was rollicking good fun.  It progressed, sometimes seamlessly, sometimes rather jarringly, from the Rhine, up to the Gods, down to Nibelheim, then back on up to Valhalla, skipped all of Act 1 of Walkure, flitted past the fight scene, then to the Ride and off to the magic fire, into idyllic Siegfried territory, via the dragon-slaying back to the fiery rock, thence a trip down the Rhine, off to the funeral and finally the great conflagration and vision of a new world.  A delight from beginning to end.  It would be so easy to be sniffy, but I can’t.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I had fleeting images of various Ring productions in my mind (I tried to banish the Mariinsky debacle), but equally I could just sit back and revel in the music free of the (inevitable) distractions.  A very worthy endeavour, and I am pleased to report being vindicated in that view by John Deathridge, whose pre-performance talk gave it a seal of approval, and invoked the shade of Wagner for a similar endorsement.  Neeme Järvi injected drama into the Royal Philharmonic and, overlooking some slightly off horns at some very exposed moments, gave the piece an impressive outing.

This was the dress rehearsal for a revival of Francesca Zambello’s January 2007 production. It worked far better this time, mainly because Elina Garanča was such a superb Carmen. I last saw her as Cenerentola in the Metropolitan Opera’s live cinema screening, where she was excellent. Here, in quite a different role, her voice had the right edge for the part, and her acting was both seductively sexy and prettily arrogant. Compared to the performance of Anna Caterina Antonacci last time, which lacked all subtlety . . . well, there is no comparison at all. The dance sequences at Lilas Pastia’s, with professional dancers, seemed much better this time. Unfortunately the fight sequences directed by Mike Loades were still unconvincing. Designs by Tanya McCallin, with their high walls giving a sense of fateful claustrophobia, work well, as does the lighting by Paule Constable.

The orchestra gave a fine edge to the music, under the direction of Bertrand de Billy, who started things off at a galloping pace. With Elina Garanča as Carmen, and Roberto Alagna as Don José, both entirely convincing in their parts and singing so powerfully, this was a glowing performance. Liping Zhang did well as Micaela, Ildebrando D’Arcangelo was an elegant Toreador, and it was a delight to hear Henry Waddington speaking such commanding French as Lieutenant Zuniga.

Portland Opera’s 2009/10 season opens in a little less than a month with La Bohème, and so for the next few weeks I plan to provide a broader context for the work by exploring a variety of social, cultural, and musical themes and issues. Today I thought I’d feature an aria from Puccini’s very first operatic venture, Le Villi (The Willis), which received its premiere at the Teatro dal Verme, Milan, on May 31, 1884. While the composer is still consolidating his style, it’s possible to detect subtle hints of what’s to come.

According to Slavic folklore, Willis are spirits of young girls who died of broken hearts. At midnight they rise from the dead decked out in full bridal attire, hoping to capture some unsuspecting man who wanders into the forest. When they find their prey, they engage him in a violent dance to the death. Some of you may also recognize this as the same basic plot line for Adolphe Adam’s 1841 ballet, Giselle.

ROBERTO
Here is the house.
God, what a horrendous night!
Strange voices follow me.
The Willis*, away with you!
They are imaginings!
No, the Willi's fatal vengeance does not pursue me!
Remorse, you alone follow me like an infernal viper!
Viper of infernal poison!

My anguished thoughts return to the happy days.
The flowers laughed in May,
love bloomed, and it bloomed for me!
Now all is covered with lugubrious mystery
And I do not feel anything in my heart but sadness and terror!
(English translation by Bob Kingston)

Un martes como hoy, 14 de julio, pero de 1789, el pueblo de Francia (el que no estaba comprendido dentro de los tres Estados Generales) tomó por asalto La Bastille. Se trataba de una fortaleza casi en desuso, que sólo albergaba un par de lunáticos (entre ellos el famoso ’sodomita’ Marqués de Sade). Sin embargo, la fortaleza era el símbolo por excelencia del absolutismo francés. Su destrucción marcó el inicio del fin del Ancien Régime.

La Liberté guidant le peuple (1830) de Eugène Delacroix

Esta madrugada asistimos a una nueva toma de La Bastille. Me refiero a los jóvenes hijos de inmigrantes que incendiaron autos en las calles parisinas. Sí, ellos son las nuevas víctimas del ‘nuevo’ Ancien Régime. Y con esto me refiero a las políticas inmigratorias, no sólo de Francia, sino de Europa en general, para con los latinoamericanos (quienes en otra época les dieron albergue), para con los pueblos de África (que tanto sufrieron por culpa de ellos) y para con los mismos europeos (los del este, eternas víctimas del odio y la intolerancia). Y que nadie me diga que éstos jóvenes son vándalos. Acaso los de 1789 no lo fueron también?

También coincide en esta fecha, el Día Nacional de Francia. Qué decir de Fancia? Es un pueblo racista por excelencia: fue colaboracionista de los nazis en cuanto a deportación de judíos franceses. Pero ha dado muchas cosas lindas: un bello idioma, una deliciosa cocina y a Carla Bruni. Ahh cierto que Carla es italiana.

Bueno, pero más allá del chiste, quien puede resistirse a la voz de Edith Piaf? Quien no ha disfrutado con alguna pieza de Ravel? Y no nos olvidemos de Victor Hugo, de Matisse, de Sartre, de Georges Méliès, de Brigitte Bardot y del Inspector Clouseau, entre un interminable etc.

Para finalizar, no me decidía si poner La Marseillaise interpretada por Bernstein, o cantada por Roberto Alagna. Pero me decidí por esta inolvidable escena del film Casablanca.

I mean, really…Love it.  Madly.

The idea of production effecting the opera at its core–a combination of words and music–came up in last week’s Monteverdi and Sant’Alessio viewing/listenings.  Which, natuerlich, got me thinking about opera in performance today, especially in light of Anne Midgette’s recent post in the WashPost’s Classical Beat.  Though talking about symphonies, a truly different beast, her central idea is a clear crossover:

“Of course, today’s symphony orchestra is essentially a 19th-century phenomenon; as Fischer said, it hasn’t fundamentally changed for 100 years. But what does it mean, in concrete terms, to change an orchestra? No one wants to throw the baby out with the bathwater and eliminate artistic standards, quality, the ability to play Mahler symphonies.”

This is light-years beyond where I’m at in the Opster Project, but I was in a Massenet mood this weekend and, while listening to the San’Sulpice scene from Manon, was struck at how many different ways this piece could be performed.  And, thanks to YouTube, I was able to sate my curiosity very easily.

There is the purely institutionalized version which, unfortunately, has to come out of the Met–the most famous opera company of the US, if not the world.  It lacks a modern edge and the performances of Vargas and Phlegming Fleming remind me more of two fat people wrestling over the last Milk Dud than it does of two people full of conflict, passion, and hormones a-go-go.  It was embarassing to watch this as they fought towards grandeur with every note, each in their own world and leaving the audience wondering where the fire was, where the passion was.

Not eager to further subject myself to Renaaaaay but interested in seeing as many points of view possible, this was a slightly more on-target production with a more minimal set and the added fire of Marcelo Alvarez, though again they lacked a certain connection that, while imperative in any opera, is uber-important when you’re doing a scene as former lovers, one attempting to reconcile, the other attempting to repent, fighting it out to see which one will win (spoiler alert: the soprano wins).

In one of my freshman theatre seminars, we read Grotowski’s “Towards a Poor Theatre,” which argued that theatre would never be able to compete with television and film in terms of grandeur, so the best theatre should go in the opposite direction entirely.  I sometimes think about what Grotowski would say to the Met, or at least the old, Joe Volpe/Rudolph Bing Met which was full of camels and chandeliers.  It’s upsetting to see our country, a country that was not a part of the creation of opera, still married to the “tradition” of grand theatre, a tradition that they more or less adopted from the European houses and a tradition that is, for the most part, all but dead in Europe.  There are some notable exceptions, and ironically not all of them have to do with age–this Sills/Price San’Sulpice is almost as old as Fleming (or at least Fleming’s birth certificate), yet it is focused entirely on the singers.  There is barely a set, but their energy fills the room.  Sills is sensual in a way that would still make some people call “scandale!” today.   It’s clear here that a production is a living, breathing thing and even the best set can be useless without the right singers/performers.

The two that really got me going, however, were both–ironically–with Anna Netrebko sliding into Manon in Vienna (with Roberto Alagna) and Berlin (with Rolando Villazon).  The Villazon shows restraint, particularly physically with the gates of San’Sulpice separating the lovers.  It’s cruel, acerbic, and spiteful, and ultimately worn down by Netrebs.  But she seems a tad out of place at times, for split seconds it’s as though she’s morphing out of Manon and back into Anna.  Not so with Alagna.  The violent passion mirrors, serves, and enhances Massenet’s score–what every opera production ought to do.  What’s more, it’s as hot as any Brangelina clip.  Show this scene to a bunch of 20 and 30 somethings and there won’t be a dry seat in the house.

And then there’s the one where they almost go too far to the other side, thanks to Natalie Dessay who, while bringing the crazy beautifully in the Met’s Lucia, seems to lack a purpose to her marble-tossing here.

Production study such as this is also innumerably helpful to singers, particularly in researching new (or at least new-to-them) roles.  Ultimately you want to create a character that’s true to your own self as much as it’s true to the composer and librettist.  There’s more than one way to skin a cat, there’s more than one way to sing Manon.  With only one exception, each of these Manons truly works in its own unique way.  The marketers and administrators for opera houses–and in most industries these days–talk about authentically connecting with new audience members/customers through copy, advertising, and the internet, but we also must remember that one of the other vital forms of authentic connection is through the performers themselves.

Now the French National Anthem. This is one which stirs the blood. Small wonder the French respond and they know the words.

A real anthem.

BTW in this area the haka just does not cut it. A nation is not defined by some tribal strutting.

Roberto Alagna

Roberto Alagna nasce da genitori siciliani a Clichy-sous-Bois il 7 giugno 1963. Dopo aver cantato nei cabaret, scopre la lirica vedendo i film con Mario Lanza e attraverso i dischi dei maqggiori tenori del passato. Debutta nell’opera a 25 anni nel ruolo di Alfredo a Glyndebourne, ruolo a cui resterà fedele impersonandolo almeno 150 volte. Il suo lancio avverrà proprio in questo ruolo nel 1990 alla Scala diretto da Riccardo Muti.

Altro ruolo che lo rende famoso è quello di Rodolfo nella Bohème

Anche il Romeo di Roméo et Juliette di Gounod sarà sempre un suo cavallo di battaglia

Nel 1996 sposa in seconde nozze Angela Gheorghiu: i due saranno una delle coppie più glamour della lirica.

Roberto Alagna e Angela Gheorghiu

La cronaca si occupa di lui quando il 10 dicembre 2006 fischiato dai loggionisti della Scala si rifiuterà di continuare a cantare il ruolo di Radames, costringendo il sostituto a entrare velocemente in scena senza neppure aver indossato i costumi.

Rimane sempre fedele alle proprie origini sicule:

This was a terrific performance, with Sondra Radvanovsky and Roberto Alagna in superb voice as Leonora and Manrico. They could not have been better in this dress rehearsal for a new run of Trovatore, performed in a co-production with the Teatro Real in Madrid by Elijah Moshinsky, with good set designs by Dante Ferretti, costumes by Anne Tilby, and excellent fight sequences by William Hobbs. The orchestra played beautifully under the direction of Carlo Rizzi, and the supporting cast all sang well. Dmitri Hvorostovsky brought a sensitivity to the Count di Luna making him a slightly more sympathetic character than is sometimes the case. This fitted in well with the production, because at the end he stabs Manrico on stage and, told that he’s just killed his brother, holds him in his arms as he dies. Manrico’s surrogate mother, the gypsy Azucena, was well sung by Malgorzata Walewska, making her debut at Covent Garden, and Ferrando was Mikhail Petrenko. Altogether the cast worked well together, and the staging was very effective indeed, but what really put this into the stratosphere was Roberto Alagna as the troubadour Manrico, and Sondra Radvanovsky, whom I also saw as a superb Leonora in Chicago in November 2006.

Netrebko

As Interchanging Idioms reported last week, Gramophone’s March 2009 issue will feature Anna Netrebko and Angela Gheorghiu, arguably opera’s two hottest arias at the moment, and ask which of the two is today’s true prima donna.  (Why they can’t say both are ruling the streets is beyond me, but as editor James Inverne explains, it’s a throwback to the mid-20th Century era of dueling divas).  New recordings by both Angie and Netrebs will be reviewed, and critic gurus will take turns defending both sopranos in a verbal celebrity deathmatch kind of way.

Naturally, since it’s the Gramophone, it’ll probably end up being very restrained, respectful, and ultimately a love letter of sorts to both gals.  But it touches on a point that Hollywood caught wise to decades ago: star power sells.

It’s not that every boutique opera company needs to sign on a diva

Gheorghiu

(or divo) for next season, but opera in general benefits with a few key ambassadors.  And it helps if those ambassadors have fantastic gams, a shayna punim, or abs you can grate cheese on.  The fat lady stereotype still exists in millions of minds (especially minds in the gen-x and gen-y set), and will be the first image called up when the word “opera” is heard.  But give the people something that is visually stimulating to compliment the aural stimulation, and that stereotype will melt away faster than Deborah Voigt’s extra pounds.

Peter Gelb came under some scrutiny last year when he began putting a focus on singers who were compelling actors and who visually “made sense” in their respective roles (no more 250-lb starving bohemians).  However, as the US’s–if not the world’s–most-recognized opera company, the oness is on them to put their best face forward (as it were).  The Met probably has more patrons and donors than any other opera company in America.  It’s following is there.  For now.   Now it’s simply leading the way for new audiences and using methods that speak to those demographics.

(And anywhere Roberto Alagna goes, I’m going.)

For the 0.01% of you not hep to the recent Facebook phenom, a survey is currently going around like herpes asking users to list 25 random facts about themselves and then tagging one person for each fact so that they, in turn, post two dozen-plus factoids about themselves.  It’s the sort of viral communications that curls my toes.  But writer buddy Ayun Halliday took it to the next level: being a memoirist, most of us know more about Ayun than we probably care to admit, so she gave a list of 25 films, performances, books, and the like that shaped who she is in some way.

I’m drinking Ayun’s Kool-Aid.  Not only do the following 25 things explain who I am, they explain how I view the world, particularly the arts world.  And if every Gen X and Gen Y-er did one of these, we would strike arts management gold.

1.  “Who’s Afraid of Opera” (Joan Sutherland and Co., first watched ca. 1987)
I still get uncontrollably excited/giddy when meet someone else who remembers seeing these cheeseball operas, done in budget TV glory and condensed to 30 minutes.  My grandparents owned three of the four series on laser-disc, and I had the fourth and final installation on VHS, rendering all my copies unwatchable in this day and age.  But I remember nights where, as my mother completed her med residency, I would watch Joan and her puppet friends break down Rossini, Gounod, Donizetti, Verdi, Offenbach, and Thomas.  This is what gave me the opera bug, and what led to a four-year old me trick-or-treating in suburban Rhode Island as Mephistophele–not the devil (I corrected people).

2.  Title Unremembered–Series of Chagall Etudes (Moscow, 2004 January)
I may not be able to remember the title (in my defense, it was the coldest theater in the world, I had no clue how to handle jet-lag, and it was my first time out of the country which left me totally zonked), but I remember how maddeningly dedicated these Muscovite thesps were to their art.  I was studying at the Moscow Art Theatre School over winter break from my first semester at college, and etudes were the bread-and-butter of MXAT students.  While I’m also fuzzy on all of the production details and minutae–burning a film screen with a projection of Chagall himself dancing, children dressed as Jewish elders, little to no dialogue–I remember the transformative feeling I felt while leaving the theater.  Less than a year later, I converted to Judaism.

3.  War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy, 2006 Summer-Fall)
“Should I read War and Peace?” I asked my older friend while gabbing on the phone in Barnes and Noble.
“Absolutely,” she said, “I read it while living in Europe.  You can skip the 40-page descriptions of the horses in battle, though.”
I actually didn’t skip any of it and lugged around a 1200+ page, gradually disintegrating, Modern Library classic edition around in my purse for a good five months.  People looked at me funny.  But actually, it wasn’t that hard to read.  It was amazing escapism while feeding into my Russophilia, and it totally got my mind off summer in New York with no air conditioner.  It’s unironically one of my top 5 favorite books.  The BBC miniseries with Anthony Hopkins is pretty stellar, too, and the theme song still reverberates in my head.

4.  Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen, 2008 November)
At the risk of going full Russophile, I’ll table Love and Death (my all-time Woody Allen fave) and offer up Hannah and Her Sisters, a close second.  If it had Diane Keaton, it may have gone to the top, but some of the moments here are so gob-smackingly nuanced, complex, and satisfying that I could probably watch it over and over and still find something new each time.  Double points for his use of Bach.  This was one of the few Allen films I hadn’t seen, but a week after becoming a victim of Bushonomics, I Netflixed it and, like Woody’s character with Duck Soup, felt instantly better and saw the world in rational perspective.

4.  Kremerata Baltica  (Mostly Mozart Festival, 2006 August)
A marathon two-evening performance featuring all of Mozart’s violin concerti and some other gems and crazy pieces.  The KB “get” something about Mozart that allows them to completely turn music on its ear, whether it’s in the traditional Violin Concerto No. 5 or a combo of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and Scotland the Brave/Auld Lang Syne (true story).  I’ve never been so riveted at an orchestral concert.  Required listening and watching for any classical musician/singer today.

5.  Slice to Sharp  (Jorma Elo / New York City Ballet, 2006 June)
During college, I ushered at the New York State Theatre (before it was the Koch Theatre), covering both New York City Opera and New York City Ballet (plus the Lincoln Center/Mostly Mozart Festivals).  It took me a while to get fully into both ballet and Vivaldi, but this neatly covered both in one fell swoop.  Elo’s manipulation of the dancers’ bodies–movements that complemented and contrasted the pretty structured Vivaldi–was a rush.  Simply watching it gave you a runner’s high.   And on the night of its premiere, the audience went wild.  I want to see opera with that same verve and energy and connective disjointedness.

6.  La Clemenza di Tito (The Estates Theater, Prague, 2007 May)
I have a fascination with trouser roles for mezzo-sopranos in opera, to the point where I wrote a play about one during my brief stint as a Fordham University playwriting major.  There’s a forced physicality in those roles that you don’t neccessarily see in sopranos singing heroines.  There’s a visual that automatically goes with the description–Ace-bandaged breasts, short hair, britches–but in the latter part of the 20th/early 21st Century, the pants role has also been played with visually.  Rather than wigs, hair is cut or put in a ponytail.  The 5 o’clock shadow is left in the makeup kit.  It automatically lends a sexuality to the opera that has disappeared with our progressive social mores.
Also shifting is operatic sets.  Mozart almost automatically generates baroque structures for miles, but this production of Clemenza in Prague was (presumably modeled after the set for a Paris production), white.  White-as-crack-on-Christmas-morning, white.  It was all about the singers, all about the music, all about the performers.  And it was one of the first Mozart operas I’d seen live that made it all work, like a Tim Gunn-mentored dress on the runway.  And Kate Aldrich was hot stuff to boot.
This video isn’t part of the Prague production, nor does it have Aldrich, but Vesselina Kasarova was also one of the first mezzos to get me on my trouser role kick.  The chemistry here is also pretty great.

7.  Goodbye, Lenin! (2004, Summer)
The scene where the mother first steps outside after the fall of the Berlin Wall.  And Yann Tiersen’s score.  Four years later I went to Berlin.

8.  Special Topics in Calamity Physics (Marisha Pessl, 2007 April)
Because I am Blue Van Meer.  It took me a while to buy the book–I’m unconscionably oblivious to bestsellers until months, if not years after the fact–but after reading Pessl’s New York Diet on Grub Street, I found her oddly compelling and figured it’d be a good read for the bus/subway.  I wound up devouring the thing during every waking moment–commute, slyly at work, an entire precious Saturday afternoon.  It made being smart and cultured (and slightly outcast as a result) feel okay.

9.  Amadeus (Milos Forman, first watched ca. 1990, first re-watched 2003 January)
All I remember from the first period that I watched this movie was the scene where Tom Hulce chases Elizabeth Berridge around under the table.  In fact, for a period of time, I watched it specifically for that scene.  The tape got lost somewhere around my eighth birthday.  I saw it again in 2003 when I received the Director’s Cut on DVD and it was like rekindling a romance.  That movie, to this day, has not aged a bit.  Shaffer’s descriptions of Mozart’s music are some of the most beautiful descriptions of music.  More than that, the film made Mozart a pop-culture icon in the late 80s.
My newest obsession with the film, however, is the making-of featurette on Disc 2.  One of the best making-ofs ever, it balances anecdotes (like F. Murray Abraham and a chandelier in communist Prague) with real insight into the artistic process.  I wish I could delve into the heads of the designers, directors, actors, and writers for everything on this list.

10.  Desk Set (Katharine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy, 2002 Winter)
I wanted to be Katharine Hepburn’s character in this film when I was a kid.  One of the earliest examples of geek chic.

11. God The Band (1999 Winter)
Long before Kristen Schaal and Flight of the Conchords, there was me, growing up in Rhode Island, obsessed with God The Band.  Though I wasn’t nearly as bad as Mel, GTB was still one of the first bands I really truly liked (rather than liking because everyone else in my school liked ‘em), discovered on my own, and still listen to ten years later.  They played fun music AND wore ruffled tuxedo shirts the likes of which I haven’t seen since my parent’s wedding photos in the early 80s.  It’s also highly probable that I still have a schoolgirl crush on Mugwump Jizm.

12.  Werther (Metropolitan Opera, January 2004)
I love putting this story right below something involving God The Band.  It was one of the coldest nights of the year, I had just woken up from a 23 hour nap thanks to my first jet lag, and Roberto Alagna got a hard-on while singing “Pourquoi Me Reveiller?”  That’s the kind of thing that sticks with you like oatmeal to ribs.

13.  Geoff Dyer (2002, 2004, and 2005, Various Months)
Geoff made me the traveler I am today.  Out of Sheer Rage was recommended to me after I read some stuff by Alain de Botton and expressed an interest in DH Lawrence.  I started reading it in high school, put it down for a few years, and picked it up on a flight to Paris.  The day I got back from Paris, I bought his collection of essays, Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It, and then the next year read Paris Trance (A Romance), which sealed the trifecta for me.  Though I have read and enjoyed several of his other books, his eye for detail in Trance, quirky humour in Rage, and sentences in Yoga like: “I was happy to be here in this chair-intensive café in the autumn of my drug-taking years, with my soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend, Dazed, who a few weeks later would succumb to one of her periodic bouts of severe depression” (interrupting an otherwise breezy-ish essay) make me wish I’d written them.  I’d written before reading Dyer, but I don’t think I’d still be writing today if it weren’t for his works.

14.  Rose Rage (Duke Theater/Chicago Shakespeare Theater, 2004 September)
Seeing Henry IV parts I, II, and III in one marathon production (with a dinner break that my gal-pal and I spent eating sweet and sour chicken and egg rolls at Ollie’s Noodle Shop) is like seeing all four parts of the Ring Cycle at once.  We came out wired.  For three of the Bard’s lesser-known but just-as-violent-as-Macbeth plays, the company used cabbages and offal as the outlets for beheadings, stabbings, and other murders and set the whole of the performance in a Victorian butcher shop.  Never have I reacted so sharply to a vegetable being chopped.  I still talk about it.

15.  Batsheva Dance Company – Telophaza (Lincoln Center Festival, 2006 July)
The audience interaction, use of “I’m on Fire,” and crazy Israeli music was one thing.  But when they got to the end blow-out with nightclub lighting, bagpipe dance music, and a post-coital chick crawling towards a camera projected onto the stage, it was something else altogether.  Also, the way they contorted their bodies while still making it look like dance rather than epilepsy and when they show a symphony of movement in standing still.

16.  Orlando (New York City Opera, 2005 April)
The first time Handel REALLY clicked for me.  I was ushering for this performance and first saw a Sunday matinee under the haze of a few bellinis at Cafe Lalo brunch from 45 minutes earlier.  Maybe that helped, but Matthew White singing “Verdi allori” certainly sealed the deal.  And coming in from the misty rain to a warm and lush green set was sort of delicious.

17.  Faust (The Metropolitan Opera, 2005 May-ish)
Went for Alagna and because I’d never seen this (a favorite) live, but stayed for Dmitri Hvorostovsky.  He had this brilliant white hair and dark navy soldier’s uniform which you completely forgot about the moment he opened his mouth.  When he finished “Avant de quitter ces lieux,” there was first silence.  Then a roar of bravos.  THEN came the applause.  Some of the production was cheeseball and had plenty of WTF moments, but I was still in my own little world by the end and was apparently told by an usher that I had to clear out of the theatre 5 minutes after everyone else had left.  I still have a photo/article from Vanity Fair featuring Dmitri, Rene, and Roberto called “The Three Tens.”

18.  New York Magazine (First read summer 2003-ish)
Specifically, these articles (in no particular order):
Up With Grups
Change Your Life (not fair, I know)
Vanishing Act (Spalding’s suicide helped me cope with my father’s death)
The Education of Alexandra Polier
Blogs to Riches
The Fast Supper
Can’t Get No Satisfaction
Say Everything
Alone Together
And Grub Street’s New York Diet.  It appeals to the foodie voyeur in me.  What people eat is so telling of whether or not I’d like them in real life.  New York got me through so many temp jobs and thankfully shaped my consciousness for the better while I was dying of boredom, phone logs, and fluorescent lights.

19.  Anthony Bourdain’s Live From Beirut Special (2008 August)
Being Syrian, it was hard to watch a country that my grandmother left and a country I felt proud to be a part of wreak such havoc.  Somehow, seeing it all through the food refraction made it the most palpable.  One day after watching this on my iPod (while going through Germany and Austria), Russia invaded Georgia.

20.  Hilary Hahn and Chris Thile in Concert (Housing Works Bookstore, 2006 October)
Hilary was the first classical recording artist that I began to actively follow (as opposed to following a composer) as a teen.  She was about my age and one of the things that made me want to travel most was reading her online journal and poring over her photos.  I think, somewhat as a result, we probably share similar worldviews.
But first seeing her live sitting on the floor of the Housing Works Bookstore on the LES–sitting two feet away from her spiffy boots, I may add–made her less of a classical icon and more of just a really cool musician.  A really cool musician who played a Bach duet with mandolin jamming folk artist Chris Thile (who looked like he was making country love to his instrument) and a solo version of Erlkoening–all parts at once.  And afterwards my boyfriend and I browsed dusty old books and ate at 30s Tokyo sexpot restaurant Kenka.
We saw her recently with the LA Phil.  While she was genius, it just wasn’t the same.

21.  Moonstruck (First watched 1988-ish)
This is my family’s movie–or more specifially, mine and my mother’s movie.  She has the exact same La Boheme poster that hangs in Nic Cage’s apartment.  When we run out of things to talk about at lunch, I’ll lean in and say “And then, there’s copper…which is the only pipe I use.”  It’s silly, but it’s so how I feel about my family sometimes that I probably wouldn’t be who I am today if i didn’t cook up a big plate of spaghetti and meatballs and watch this every now and then.

22.  Pink Martini (2002 Summer)
I had their first CD for about a year before I first listened to it–after spending a summer in New York at Barnard College–and it blew my small-town mind.  No one had ever told me you could make a CD that represented about 20 different cultures.

23.  I Was Told There’d Be Cake (Sloane Crosley, 2008 Summer)
There’s a pattern here, like STiCP, I was reluctant to pick this up because it seemed like one of those books that everyone was reading.  But I read the entire thing cover-to-cover on a plane ride and was howling while doing window-seat yoga to keep the circulation going.  There are some things that Crosley talks about that I am honestly not sure I’d ever share–but I was thinking them all the same.  It’s really refreshing to read an essayist whose pop culture references speak to my generation without making Oregon Trail or summer camp seem embarassingly lame.

24.  AngloMania (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006 Summer)
I wanted to live in this exhibition.  The perfect mix of punk rock and high culture.

25.  Lucia di Lammermoor (Donizetti, Too Many Times to Recall)
I’ve actually only seen this live once, but it’s my grandfather’s favorite opera, one of my mother’s favorite operas, and, through cultural/familial osmosis, mine as well.  If I could only listen to one opera for the rest of my life, I think I could go with this one.  And if I could only pick two pieces, they’d be Edgardo’s death scene (at the end of the opera) and the Sextet (from Act II).  Every time I listen to them I find something new in the music.

If this opera were by a lesser composer than Puccini it would be a forgotten work, and indeed the Met has not staged it in 72 years. Its conception arose when Puccini accepted a lucrative contract from Vienna to write an operetta with eight or ten numbers only, the rest to be spoken dialogue. But he rejected the libretto submitted by the Viennese, and the composition of the text was given to the young Giuseppe Adami, who soon afterwards wrote the libretto for Il Tabarro, a dramatically powerful one-act opera. By contrast, La Rondine hovers uneasily between opera and operetta, and although containing some pretty music and technically difficult passages for the soprano, it never really convinces. The story is certainly more appropriate to an operetta: a lively courtesan wants to see what true romance is really like, so she falls in love; but being unable to explain her history to her lover, she reluctantly returns to her life as a courtesan.

It’s a wonderful vehicle for the soprano, and Angela Gheorghiu sang the main role of Magda beautifully, looking and acting the part to perfection. Roberto Alagna sang Ruggero, a newcomer to Paris and the young man she falls in love with. His ardour seemed forceful and shallow at the same time, but this should be judged as an operetta, and when Samuel Ramey, singing the part of Rambaldo, comes on at the end to take Magda back to his life of wealthy frivolity, the superficiality of the story becomes all too apparent. The other love match, between Prunier and Magda’s maid Lisette was well sung by Marius Brenciu and Lisette Oropresa, and she was a delight, hamming the part up to perfection.

The delightful production by Nicolas Joël, with sets by Ezio Frigerio and costumes by Franca Squarciapino, was already staged in London as well as Toulouse and San Francisco, and the young conductor Marco Armiliato, who also directed the Toulouse production, kept things moving and gave the singers plenty of room to express themselves.