March comes in like a hairy, wet beast

I have some opinions about the Goethe-Institut, none of which I'll ennumerate because I'm beginning to learn how very public a thing is a blog (and I will now NOT go into how I came to discover this precisely because I am now wise enough not to). Ahum. Be that as it may, I had an interesting experience yesterday which involved stumbling through a series of 3 separate bureaucratic conversations with a handful of bureaucratic German employees of the state on the topic of whether my subway card was or was not valid and whether or not I should be required to purchase a different card at personal expense if I wished to continue riding the subway. Regardless of the fact that I lost all my arguments, it turns out I can speak German. Don't take this for braggadocio. I'm awful. But I've moved from zero to one, and I'm happy.

Another piece of news is that I'm going to Oslo. Or at least, I'm invited if I wish to go. For the month of May. Something to chew on.

The curtain call for the Aida premiere last night must have lasted twenty minutes. I was beginning to think Christopher & the rest of the production team would *not* be appearing onstage. The tiny cheerleaders with Little-Miss-Sunshine-beauty-contest hair came out TWICE for TWO bows, and the little boys in the pie-eating contest came out TWICE, as did poor Aida, who got booed rather badly. I will say, not to sound like a complete opera snob, that she was having trouble with the upper register yesterday like a balloon slowly losing its air. When I did a quick calculation nearing intermission, she'd already crashed through 8 or 9 high C's or whatever they were and had approximately one heap more to go. I decided that she was headed for a mudslide in the third act and mimed a small panic attack from my dark vantage point in the loges where the Deutsche Oper admin had unkindly decided to put me. (It was, like, Loge Box Z79 or something like that.)

Anyway, back to the unending bows. Twenty minutes of bowing goes by and for one thing I can't figure out why the 95% elderly audience hasn't already gotten up to go. At the Lyric in Chicago there is a solid majority of elderly opera-goers that bolt (well, bolt ... slowly) up from their seats at the the-opera-is-over-in-exactly-39-seconds moment and head for the exits like they'd broken down the gates of Hades and were swarming back into the land of the living. But they were all still in their seats at the Deutsche Oper, because the Germans knew something I didn't, which was that Christopher eventually HAD to emerge, and when he did, they were ready to boo at him. And how.

Christopher swaggered and grinned through his bows like a cowboy. Having clearly expected this sort of response he looked like he would have been disappointed if they *hadn't* wanted to kill him. How fun! BOO! they shouted. Christopher swaggered to the chorus and gestured, and clapped, and gestured and clapped gushingly at the orchestra. Boo! they shouted. Nerves of steel, I tell you. And opinions to match. I like the guy.

A few photos.
1) Marriott conference center/Salt Lake City revival/ ???
2) Little-Miss-Sunshine pageant contestants/cheerleaders
3) Radames drowning Aida 5 seconds before curtain