One Week, 2.5 Operas

As regular readers know, I have a fair number of time constraints in my life, most notably working 40 miles from home and my jujitsu classes. The classes used to be on Sunday afternoons at 4:15 and Tuesday nights at 8:15; really awful times for any number of reasons. Few people want to start working out at 8:15 p.m., and Sunday afternoons? Prime concert time, plus seeing friends time, or going to a museum time, etc.

Earlier this year, I moved the dojo to El Cerrito, to a very nice space. I'm now teaching Tuesday and Thursday nights at 7:30, which works with my work schedule. I'd love to be teaching at 7, but I can't reliably get to El Cerrito that early.

Anyway, this week has all sorts of things happening: the openings of Les Troyens and La Ciociara, and the Missa Solemnis at SFS. I need to go to both opera openings; I want to see the Missa (the first bring-up in 2011, was....not good), and I also want to see Michaela Martens as Cassandre. (Honestly, if I could I'd probably go to all of the Troyens performances, because it might not be performed here again in my lifetime.)

I am still getting over the damn cold I caught almost three weeks ago; going to the first Missa performance Wednesday night, between being out at class T & Th, was not happening. I can't see Martens on the 20th, opposite Ojai North and a friend's annual party. Can't go to the Missa when I have to be at the opera tomorrow night.

So: I bought a cheap balcony seat to Troyens tonight. The Troy scenes start around 6 and run roughly 80-90 minutes, depending on curtain time and how fast Runnicles goes tonight.* It'll be over by 7:40. That's plenty of time to get across the street for the Missa, which lasts less than 90 minutes and will be done around the second Troyens. I am not going back across the street for Act V, though.

* Asterisk because the 1998 Tristan varied, performance to performance, by as much as 20 minutes, and it was not variation in the length of the intermissions, either.