Word: opera
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Smack dab in the middle of downtown Seattle the early stages of construction on the city's new opera house make the entire block across from the Post Office between Second and Third Streets look like a war zone. Where the sidewalks were, plywood planks support the braver pedestrians and piles of dirt and rubble spill out into the edges of the street. Seattle's fleet of mountain biking bicycle couriers have a heyday of dodging the construction runoff, but for most downtown traffic, the construction makes getting around that block an arduous task...
When I visited Seattle in June, I first stumbled across this contrast in a coffee shop across the street from the opera house construction site. In the ground floor of an office building, local coffee moguls had recently installed a Seattle's Best Coffee, a Starbucks-like franchise (Yes, the very same as our dear Science Center coffee cart and Loker Commons fare). One morning, as I sat in that coffee shop with the entertainment supplement to the Seattle Times and a cappuccino, feeling quite sophisticated searching for cultural enlightenment to the tune of an espresso drink, a crew...
...tempos, phrasing instructions and a host of interpretative intangibles from the guy who's waving a baton at them. If Kaplan at Salzburg did not bring to mind a slick stick like Riccardo Muti or Valery Gergiev, his intense, attentive manner in front of the Philharmonia, the Vienna State Opera Chorus, mezzo-soprano Doris Soffel and soprano Rosa Mannion bespoke a firm grasp. Mahler's heaven-storming climaxes shook the Grossesfestspielhaus to its granite foundations, and anyone who did not feel a chill at the tremendous peroration must either have been dead or Austrian...
...this the Olympics or One Life to Live? The story of Vitali took almost as much time to tell as Vitali took to perform. While the soap opera content of the Games has been growing ever since ABC's Roone Arledge invented "Up Close and Personal" for the 1972 Games, this year the mush quotient is out of control. The Dick Enberg Moment has become the tail wagging the dog. The spot on fencer Peter Westbrook prevailing over his humble beginnings ran four minutes, and we saw only three seconds of Westbrook actually jousting...
Nonetheless, Boston is extremely lucky to have such an incredible show within its city limits, even if it is for only a month. Brave the often-frightening prices demanded by TicketMaster for often-mediocre seats. The ambiance alone of "The Phantom of the Opera" is worth the high cost, and appreciating the musical talent it seeps with will more than pay you back. Go ahead and spring for the tickets. From the moment the chandelier rises to the instant the last note echoes off the stage, you too will be spellbound in wide-eyed wonder...