Attending the Opera last week

I dressed up, it felt like the thing to do. So did Erin and Guy and Nardo so we were a good looking bunch headed to see the Metropolitan Opera performing Aida is all I'm saying. 

Tom unexpectedly couldn't come, so I had texted Nardo three hours before curtain and offered up the ticket. Nardo couldn't have said yes faster. He's a fan of the opera. He mentioned he knows several of the songs in Aida by heart. He also said he's thrilled to see it because this might be the last time the Met uses this particular Aida scenery, a BFD in opera parlance.

The last time I'd been to see the Met at Lincoln center was...  years ago. My Great Aunt Holly was an opera guild member and therefore could get tickets to preview shows. 

My great aunt holly with Jack
and my cute mom on his shoulders.

With my Great Aunt Holly, my mom and my grandma, we saw Billy Budd, La Boheme, Lady Butterfly. Spoiler Alert if you haven't seen them... they all end rather badly.

Also spoiler alert: So does Aida. 

I'm sensing a theme here. In an operatic nutshell: They all die at the end.

Aida has a four (4) hour run time. Four hours! Of opera! In Italian! Going in, I was a little concerned this might be harrowing. My attention span has shrunk as small as a piece of melted styrofoam. So you can call me pleasantly surprised when I was fully all in until idk maybe about quarter till midnight when I started wondering if our apartment building's doorman left at midnight on weekdays. Because I had no idea what the keycode is to get in and Tom was out of town. I started imagining Plan Bs like for example, crashing at the Holiday Inn on 26th street and waking up to the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet. Never underestimate the lobby waffle.

(Not to kill the suspense, but the doorman was in fact on duty when I showed up at quarter to one on a school night.)

The opera has a lot going for it:

• The gorgeous Metropolitan Opera House with its big chandeliers, 6 stories of mezzinines, golden curtains... it's the most famous Opera House in the world! (According classicfm.com.)
  
  
• Three intermissions, the first one being 40 minutes long, the second one being 20 minutes long and the third one being a "pause" that is pretty much the length of a normal intermission.
  
  You see, during the intermissions, you swan about in the lobby in your fancy clothes looking at other people in far fancier clothes. You chat chat with your friends and sip champagne. It's really quite delightful. It's a whole evening out, not just a show! That'd be my headline if I was writing operatic ad copy.
  
  
• An aficionado like Nardo gossiping about the opera stars and who is famous and who is up and coming and also and not to be under-appreciated, helping me keep up my 444 day DuoLingo Spanish streak during intermission #2 when i realized I was going to need to squeak in under the deadline with midnight fast approaching.
  
  It's good to have a native Spanish speaker you can hand your phone to and ask them to take care of completing your extremely beginner Spanish lesson. Which they do because they are a nice person and also your guest at the opera and it would be a super awkward third act if they refused. 

So I say all this to say, we will go again to the opera soon. I'm thinking about putting together a list of Things To Do Once a Year and this might be on the list.