I'm sorry, I couldn't resist the cheesy title. On Monday Wendy, Kir, and I went to see the ABT production of Romeo and Juliet. (Incidentally, I think I've seen more ballet in the last year than in my entire life prior to this year and, much like opera, it seems to be growing on me.) Anyway, Diana Vishneva and Angel Corella danced the lead roles (there are probably technical terms for this, but I don't know them) and were wonderful as far as I could tell. Which is to say that it all looked very pretty. I did though, dislike the beginning, where there is a brawl of sorts in which the Lords Montague and Capulet fight and people are killed. Somehow, the smallness of the initial fight in Shakespeare's play, and the fact that no one dies until later when the shit hits the fan, feel important. And when, during the first intermission, Wendy mentioned missing the words, I knew exactly what she was talking about. It's beautiful, but at the same time there's kind of an empty space because you know the lines and are frequently aware of their absense.
In other news, because I know you all will be just fascinated by this, Corella is totally on my grandmother's Hot List (along with the previously mentioned Dmitri Hvorostovsky) and she told us all about how attractive he is before we went to the show. Although in this case I will agree with her. He's a very nice looking man. Of course we were sitting so far back ("up in heaven" my grandmother likes to say) that he could have the face of a troll doll and I probably wouldn't have known without my opera glasses. And even with them you couldn't really tell what he looked like. So it goes, when one can only afford the cheap seats. In other news, Wendy just left to go take a class out of town for 6 weeks. It will be the longest period of time I've lived alone by about 5 weeks and I'm really not looking forward to it. Everyone should get out their tiny violins and commence playing.
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