NY Trip and Operatic Beach

I never got to explain the actual name of the blog, hun? Well, believe it or not, it’s the name I’ve always used, ever since I was a teenager blogging for the sake of layouts. It’s from an Andrew Llyod Webber musical called Song and Dance, never saw it, but I like the song. And now more than ever the name makes sense, this whole thing was completely unexpected.

Since I am not talking about anything specific in this post I’ll talk about my crazy decision to go to New York City alone. It was I think September of this year and I was bursting with the need to watch first rate live opera. And then the craziest idea dawned on me, ‘cause me and my family are going to spend something like 3 weeks in Orlando. So I could easily go to New York for a couple of days and then come back, and that’s exactly what I told my dad, and he agreed. It was odd, ‘cause normally, he doesn’t, so I bought the ticket from Orlando to New York, 3 tickets for the Met Opera, and booked 3 nights at a Hostel in Manhatan.

I had chosen the date that coincided with certain performances of certain super cool opera starts (just a reminder that I didn’t know Joyce at the time, if I had the dates would have been completely different). So I’m arriving on the 8^th of February and watching Rigoletto with Diana Damrau (hell yeah baby!) and Piotr Beczala both which I LOVE! Then the next day I’ll be watching L’Elisir D’Amore, one of my favorite bel canto pieces, with Anna Netrebko (my heart will stop when I see her), Erwin Schrott (then I’ll have a convulsion when I see him) and the increasingly handsome Mariusz Kwiecien (marry me!). Then in the evening I’ll watch Carmen, because Carmen never gets old, and this production is really very beautiful.

And I’ll be at the stage door alone, God help me. But my friend told me it was very easy to make friends at the stage door, we all have an objective in common! I remember it was very easy making friends at the stage door of broadway musicals, I suppose it’s gonna be like that.

 So yesterday I made a list with everything I intend to buy when I go to New York. And yeah, I’m gonna be so broke I might as well stop eating now so I can afford these things. Here is a glimpse of the list I made looking only at the Met Opera Store and at the Julliard Store. There are some titles in the sheet music department that don’t have prices ‘cause I didn’t find an edition that can fit my pocket yet, they are all in French, and my favorites.

Most importantly I found the Cendrillon dvd, they sell it at the Met Store, and it’s $40! The things we do for love, like buying Opera Cooks, I love to cook and this is the ultimate book to have if you love opera and cooking! I also decided to buy the critic edition of Don Giovanni and Die Zauberflüte because these are the ones I’ll be using for real you know. I already have a critic edition (Bärenreither) of Le Nozze di Figaro and it’s just wonderful! I could be spending much less, but my teacher warned me against buying from certain publishers that to my utter delight were the cheapest!

And I also selected quite a few cds, I mean come on! I feel so bad already downloading these things, the least I could do is buy the cd when I have the chance! Of course I’m buying the 4 Joyce DiDonato cds they have, but that’s just because she’s my idol!

I also finished my “The Mark of Athena” book the day before yesterday, sad, I didn’t want it to end. But immediately started another one called Contos de Opera e Cantos by Sergio Casoy, who is a brilliant Opera History professor here in Brasil. This book is rather delicious to read, in it he shares little stories about things that happened during the productions of the operas. Like that for instance, the Othello project of Verdi was actually called the Chocolate Project because Verdi didn’t want to compromise in the beginning and took a good two years to write the piece. While Donizetti wrote L’Elisir D’Amore in less than a month! Really very entertaining, I’m still in the Italian operas part, he talks about all sorts of opera which is rather cool.

Also yesterday I did something quite soothing! I got my opera book, a towel and my purse and headed off to the beach. It was the end of the afternoon, so it wasn’t packed with people, but I had to walk a while to find a good spot to read. It was quite nice, and a beautiful sunset!