#cameron's asks

What? No, it was actually quite enjoyable. Just, one of the boys tonight I have had a mad crush on for the last several months, which I’ve been getting over recently, and I’ve invested a lot more into that relationship than he has. The other boy is a dope and sweet and he’s a classics major interested in theatre who tolerates my heavily tangential way of storytelling?

I am not a crier at all–I cry maybe two times a year–so the answer is technically no.

Having said that, the last time I cried was at the opening number of The Bridges of Madison County, “To Build A Home”, in our first post-tech run-through. During that choral “Ah” section before “I learn to speak / I learn to sew” I just lost it. This happened as my director was dictating notes to me, his AD. I pulled myself together and didn’t miss a word, nor did we ever speak of my silent sobbing.

It’s a song about Francesca looking back on her life. It’s a series of decisions about marriage and parenthood I’m barely old enough to make myself. Whistful, she doesn’t decry her life–there’s a lot of pride to be had in building oneself a home–but it’s a song of such loss. She lost her young fiance and probably lost the chance to mourn him when her city was destroyed by the war right before her eyes. She marries a man she hardly knows and departs for a country half-way around the world whose language she cannot speak fluently and learns to run a farm when she had theretofore been a city girl.

OMG what a question!

I really don’t know enough operas to talk about quality like that. The standard rep is pretty big and I’m still scratching the surface. The worst opera’s probably one that ran for a handful of performances and was then consigned to the dustbin.