It was a day of operatic proportions

Yesterday was a day of opera.

We got up, ate breakfast (steel cut oats), had coffee, and drove to Mira Mesa to see the Met's HD telecast of Mark Morris's production of Gluck's "Orfeo ed Euridice". I love baroque opera! And this didn't disappoint me. Sometimes, the camera work annoyed me. Especially when they did close-ups of the dancers' feet when I thought that seeing all of the dancers would have been more appropriate.

The singing an music were wonderful. And it was fun (though sometimes distracting) to pick out the historical figures that made up the chorus. Who would have expected ever to see Jimi Hendrix singing at the Met?

Jerry doesn't like park and bark so it was an almost agonizing hour and a half for him.

Then came the curtain calls. Mark Morris took a bow. He should not raise his arms in exultation unless he has either tucked his shirt firmly into his pants or is wearing his muumuu. That belly is not attractive.

We then went to lunch and home. I did two loads of laundry.

Then we got back in the car and headed south again. We stopped at Starbucks on the way down because we didn't think of making our evening coffee at home before we left. We had supper at El Indio (am I making you jealous?) then went to San Diego's Civic Theater to see the opening night of San Diego Opera's 2009 season.

We saw Puccini's "Tosca." This time Jerry was more satisfied than I was. We decided that we'd get better seats this year. We had been in the balcony for many years. Now we're sitting in the Dress Circle. So we got a better view of the stage. I don't know if the sound goes up to the balcony better than the back of our new section. Things sounded muffled to me. I don't know if the singers weren't as powerful as they needed to be or if the downstairs just sucks up the sound.

The big close of Act I, the Te Deum, wasn't big. The chorus was crammed into a small space behind the altar so we couldn't really see much of them and their sound was muffled even more by the scenery that was between them and us. And Scarpia's declaration that Tosca makes him forget God sounded to me more like a simple comment than a major bit of blasphemy.

At the end of Act II Tosca flopped Scarpia's body onto his back to get to the safe passage document and keys and she left. No candles around his body. She just left. Dull.

Tosca's telling Scarpia that they'll meet before God at the end of Act III again came off as a minor comment. She did make a nice leap to her death.

Maybe the Dress Circle isn't the place to listen to the opera. But the view of the stage is much nicer.

It was a lotta opera. We have another double bill later this year.