My rather pathetic rendition of the Triumphal March, as seen above, is actually entirely appropriate to this post.
I get into work at 8:30 AM and quite innocently open up my E-mail. And, lo and behold, there is a note from my best friend, Brad Wilber, copying a Met Press release saying Roberto Alagna would be singing his first Radames at the Met tonight, replacing an indisposed Marco Berti!
SHWEEEOOOO......THUD.
After getting up from my faint, I check Met website and it's all sold out except for unbelievably expensive tickets and Standing Room. I check my bank balance. No money. (Expletives in as many languages as I can think of) I borrow $20 from sympathetic, vaguely opera-liking colleague (am getting paid tomorrow), run up to the Met on my lunch hour, which I took an hour early because I assumed everyone would be rushing to buy Standing Room once they found out about Roberto, wait half an hour on line and...
WHEW. I get a Family Circle Standing Room place. Apparently not anywhere near the last one, so maybe I was overly panicked. And I have enough for dinner, too! I tell the ticket clerk that I loved her. Since I bought the ticket with cash, I'd better not lose it!
Yay! Not just Roberto and The Other Angela, but Dolora! And Vitaly Kovaljow! And Kazushi Ono is supposed to be good. I hope it turns out OK with Roberto being dropped into the middle of things at the last minute like this. And of course, with too many people wired to view him (and Angela) solely as villains no matter what they do, there will be more negativity about him missing Butterfly last night to do this than him dropping in to save the day here. I should say that after seeing him as Romeo and Pinkerton, I have no doubt as to his ability to sing a role the size of Radames even in this house. I just hope he models on Bergonzi and Bjorling rather than Corelli.
I'll have to return my DVD of Battlestar Galactica (the new one, Season 1, discs 4 and 5) to the video store before I get a chance to watch all the extras, but hey, this is a once in a lifetime thing! Or at least not until at least 2010, which is when the last role Roberto has scheduled at the Met is...
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