“I love tickets!” squeals Cameron Diaz’s character in the first Charlie’s Angels movie. (And why has no one ever made a gif of that?) It’s supposed to illustrate what an eccentric character she is, but I understand completely. I love tickets. And spring is ticket season. Season-ticket season, to be precise. All of the arts organizations announce their upcoming seasons, tickets go on sale, and I spend hours each spring planning what I will be doing on Saturday nights all next winter. Case in point: Seattle Opera.
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Nabucco at Seattle Opera
Struck down by an angry god.
© Philip Newton
“Zeus isn’t real,” my daughter confided one day when she was four.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Yesterday I told a lie on purpose and swore by Zeus.” Swearing by Zeus was fashionable among her older sister’s Percy Jackson-obsessed friends. “And I didn’t get hit by lightning. Zeus isn’t real,” she concluded.
Fortunately, in a story that sounds apocryphal, Giuseppe Verdi’s lightning test led to a different conclusion regarding divine power. Read More
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Rigoletto at Seattle Opera
La Bohéme has a special place in my heart, but Rigoletto is a better opera. Which explains why, at the end of the holidays when all I wanted was a regularly scheduled week, 2014 started out so packed with culture and art that one might call it glamorous. The week started with high concept cocktails and a loft show and culminated in opening night of Seattle Opera’s Rigoletto. Read More