Thursday

Today is Thursday and the day of my and our excursion into the sacred halls of high culture. Tonight we are going to the opera and if that is not high culture then I really don't know what is. Maybe chamber music?

I can not fathom that Metropolitan Opera is advertising in all kinds of media that people should go and see their performances but on the other hand their prices are provocatively high. Also, it is very difficult to find evenings where there are still tickets available meaning that they are not sold out.

Unlike Broadway shows there are no discounts of any kind that can be found and believe me I did search pretty thoroughly. So, what is the point of advertising? They are just teasing the public because if I can not find anything I would like to see then I would just give up.

Speaking of opera, I do not understand why operas have to be sung in Italian or in their original languages. Every opera was already translated to English meaning they are available in that format. And guest artists can sing in English just as well as accented French or Italian or Russian. It's not that the text is so important because they always say about forty seven times that they love each other or similar but still it is good to know who is who in the performance.

Funny story.

Many years ago we went to the opera here in New York a few times and were annoyed by the fact that they were all sung in Italian. And back then there was no electronic translation available.

So, we went to Hungary in the late 1960s and while there decided to go to the Budapest Opera to see and hear an opera in Hungarian as they were always sung there. I think it was Mozart's The Magic Flute. Got good seats settled down and waited for the first artist to start singing.

When he started were totally stumped. He sang in German. We looked at each other and almost said oh sh.. here we go again. It turned out he was a guest singer from Germany and the rest of the opera was sung in Hungarian.

I am looking forward to tonight and hope that we will have a good time.