Sometimes it’s good to buy nonrefundable tickets in advance. It means you can’t back out at the last minute, no matter how much you have to do.
It means that, after three long days of parent conferences, missed meetings and students who have worked themselves into a frenzy, you’re forced to shut down the computer for a few hours and take in dinner and an opera with your adopted sister, the friend you can unload on about home and work (it helps that she’s a teacher too) and then, full and happy with Thai and chocolate, lose yourself in a gorgeous and silly story about sex, lies and damnation.
Who knew the prudish Donna Anna could be so breathtakingly pious about the memory of her departed father? Or that Leporello could work so much humor into a scene that almost claims his life? And the music — the real reason we put up with the repetitive lyrics and melodramatic make-out scenes — the soaring violins, stately harpsichord, trilling clarinets. It was one giant three-hour sigh of relief from this week that is now, happily, more than half over.
