SOLIDQUALITY

I have the good fortune of marrying a woman who’s birthday is the day before Valentine’s Day. So I usually try to have a gift for her birthday and then an activity for Valentine’s Day.  But this year it was kinda of combined and I purchased tickets to see an opera at the Met. I figured as New Yorkers we should go to the Met at least once in our lives.

I don’t know much about opera and this would be the first time for me seeing one. I decided to get tickets for the night of her birthday which limited the opera I could see to one, Adriana Lecouvreur. Fortunately, it had a opera legend as one of the leading roles, Placido Domingo. And it is his 40th year of performing at the Met and he made his debut 40 years ago in the same role he performed for us that night. Seemed kinda special to me and I think made it more special was that I didn’t even realize it until we had sat down to watch it.

So, my review. I enjoyed it, but I probably won’t make it a habit.  It was entertaining and went quickly for me even though it was 3 hours. And I found the challenge of following the story fun. It did have its slow parts, but ya I enjoyed it.

I was more impressed with the performance space. The building in Lincoln Center is great and the inside decor although dated was still impressive. I especially like the Sputnik lights. Not sure if all the performances space in Lincoln Center has them but they are cool.

The one sour note was the seating. The location I got was great, although a little pricey. But the actual seats were kinda squeezed tightly into the box we were in. Not a lot of leg room, especially for 3 hours. They did have 3 breaks though.

I would reccomend doing it atleast once in your life, especially if you are in NYC.

I really need to get into this blogging habit.

I saw Andrew Bird at Carnegie Hall in NYC just over two weeks ago and I am only now sitting down to write about. I have been thinking about it since then and thinking about writing about it also. I guess I just need to do more and not think as much.

I digress.

The show was freaking awesome. So I went with my wife Min and friend Jason and his girlfriend Brenda. I had bought the tickets off of craigslist and too be honest I couldn’t really figure out where the tickets were but I just wanted to be in the hall so it didn’t really matter. But first row dead center on the 2nd mezz. It was perfect. Sounds was awesome. And Andrew didn’t disappoint. He is a good performer and the way they all do that sampling on the fly made it really interesting to watch. He had to jump around quite a bit to time it all right. So much so he decided to take off his shoes so he feel all the pedals in the right way. The sound was very intense. And his surround amp system really made you feel like you were int he middle of a room with the music coming at you from all sides.

You could also tell, as a classically trained violinist, he was pretty excited about being at Carnegie Hall. So much so his parents were int he audience. Well you can watch a live performance here.

So go out and buy his new album.