Being Old is a Hoot

No photo today. You'll just have to imagine.

Opera lovers we are, and so, finally we began attending the simulcasts of the Metropolitan Opera that are shown in local movie theaters all across the land. For years we listened to the Met on Saturday afternoons. We work in our studios and hear these productions, imagining the sets and the house and the musicians in the pit. Once a year or so we treat ourselves to a trip to New York to see the opera.

A few weeks ago we saw our first opera on simulcast HD. It was Carmen, and not knowing how popular this would be, we arrived in what we thought was good time and found the house almost full half an hour before the show. So we had to sit fairly close to the screen.

Despite some problems with the satellite, it was absolutely wonderful! Everyone in the audience of the sold out house talked to each other, checking on the plot and the singers.The woman sitting next to me actually clasped my hand as she worried that Carmen's dress might fall off!

Today, in a stiff chilly wind, we went back to this bleak movie complex theater in the midst of a dying shopping mall to see a Verdi opera neither of us had ever heard before. Again, it was a sold out house. We arrived with a bag of sandwiches and fruit we planned to eat before the opera. (The only food available in the whole mall is the overpriced nachos and hot dogs you can get at the theater.)

Outside this sterile theater we can immediately identify the other opera goers. Mostly they are the elderly and retired, all white or Asian. (I always notice these things) Because this is the Opera, we all talk to each other. ( Can you imagine it? Placido Domingo singing Baritone?)There is no play bill to tell us the plot or the names of the singers or the producers, or the names of the contributors. But people stop by our primo place in the front, just before the rail I can put my feet on, and they talk about the opera to come. This is better than any Playbill.

We are all there in this sold out house, in our jeans and sensible shoes, old. We have no fear of being thought odd. We are odd! There was a woman down the row who had brought a head lamp so she could read her book while waiting in the twilight for the opera to begin. And we had our picnic to be consumed while we watched the preliminaries of the opera.

And what a show! We sat there, mesmerized for three hours. The intermissions were fifteen minutes long, but we were shown what goes on back stage as they changed the sets, the musicians in the pit, and interviews with the principals.

The opera was wonderful with such amazing singing, we could forgive the ridiculous plot.

We all left, we q tips and the folks with walkers and a few youngsters. And we were all in agreement that we'd had a very nice Saturday afternoon.