Vacation - Not!

I know it has been several days since posting anything here but I have not been on vacation. Perhaps my brain has but I have not. There are just some days in which nothing inspires me to write anything. It is a good thing that I do not have any deadlines to meet other than the one known as death. Like someone once said, "there are only two certain things in life - taxes and death and we can do nothing about either". As for my postings on this website, I can do something however WHAT?

At least the opera season is going well. On the 17th of September we had Handel's Rodelinda with Catherine Naglestag in the title role along with two very good counter-tenors, David Daniels as Bertarido and Gerald Thompson as Unulfo, in a modern production and last night we had an updated versioin of Rossini's L'Italiana in Algeri which was even better. Especially noteworthy last night were mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux as Isabella. Sounding like but not looking like Marilyn Horne, she could have stole the show but for some reason audience favorites were tenor William Burden (Lindoro) who has a bright clear ringing voice similar to Juan Diego Florez and Dean Peterson (Mustafa). The production team took a page out of Jean Pierra Ponnelle's playbook by having an airplane flying over the audience and then have it come down on stage in the second scene with cast members watching its progress along the way. This is reminiscent of his Pagliacci production in which a miniature truck comes down a winding mountain road as people watch and then the full sized truck rolls on stage shortly after that to be greeted by the villagers.

Today the weather actually warmed up for a change. I even sat in Huntington Park in a short sleeve shirt for a change. As usual though, our "heat wave" will only be one day in length as they are predicting cooler temperatures for tomorrow. Booo...

And before I wrap this up, remember, only three months until Christmas. Do YOU have your Christmas shopping done? #$%&*%$#@*&

Bye y'all.