Va, Tosca!

NaBloPoMo Day 5: M. and I have just returned home from an absolutely and deservedly (especially for M.) wonderful Friday evening out. Especially deserved for M. because she mailed off the 400 page final draft of her dissertation to her committee at the start of the week, culminating months of arduous, unceasing, carpal-tunnel-syndrome-inducing intellectual labor. She needed a break (and a round of applause)!

Finally, an opportunity for a date. First we dined at our favorite French restaurant in Boston, the ever-exquisite Petit Robert. Warm, crusty pain baguette, melt-in-your-mouth boeuf bourguinon, incredible apple tart. Oh la la, c'est deliceaux!

Following this gustatory delight, we attended the opening night of Tosca at the Boston Lyric Opera, which will likely be our only opera this season. This was the first time either of us had seen this particular opera. We arrived with high expectations, and neither Puccini nor the players disappointed. I am too ignorant a music listener to say more than that the singing and the score were beautiful, and the acting near superb. I will say that the BLO's artistic sensibilities impressed (as they usually do): in this rendering, the story was set in 1930s fascist Italy, a staging choice that worked perfectly. Bravo to the director and to the set and costume designers.

And the youthful denizens of Beantown also contributed to an authentically Friday Night Boston experience. Walking from the theater to the Boylston Street station, we were overtaken by waves of rude young men stumbled after by throngs of hooker-chic clad young women in totteringly steep high heels. They pushed past us into the T, but fortunately a clique of more completely dressed students were crowded around us. They were BU students who had also just seen Tosca from the cheap seats reserved for the college constituency. Give them cultural participation points for choosing opera over Bros and Hoes night with the Dekes, but shake your head at the level of rhetorical sophistication $50,000 a year buys these days:

"And you know that Scorpio dude, I was like, girl, that guy is going to play you hard. He was just like downright untrustworthy, you know what I'm saying?"