Go to the opera more

So I’m taking it off the list.

So, I recently went to see Gluck’s Orfeo ed Eurydice at Lyric, which I’ve been hoping they’d put on for, like, ten years now. (I love the Orpheus myth; I’ve seen Monteverdi’s Orfeo, Jean Cocteau’s Orphee, Black Orpheus, etc.)

It was good, though the countertenor and Italian were unsettling – I’m used to the CD recording I’ve played so many times, which is the more common arrangement, with a tenor, in French.

So anyway, a couple of weeks later, I went to see Wicked. Which I liked, though I usually don’t like Broadway stuff.

But that night, I dreamed I was watching the most beautiful part of the most beautiful aria. Orfeo sings to Eurydice, who has just died a second time, je te suis, in the tenderest, delicate, sweetest possible tones. “Je te suis” means “I am following you” – he plans to follow her into death – but it also, literally, means “I am you”. Makes me verklemt every time. Most lachrygenic.

So anyway, in my dream, I’m watching this part breathlessly, and what happens but the cast of Wicked comes on stage and starts dancing around and singing. It was so awful.