Yesterday, The radio opera was Verdi’s last opera, “Falstaff,” written when he was about my age. (His second-to-last opera had been “Otello.” He really loved Shakespeare, and in his late 70s he was rich and famous enough to indulge that love.) Falstaff is based on “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” which is said to have been written because Queen Elizabeth I wanted to see “Sir John in Love,” an impossibility given his character – even “Sir John in heat” would be almost impossible so she had to settle for “Sir John attempting to seduce faithful wives in order to extort them foe money to pay his bills.” The opera follows the play as closely as possible, given that singing takes longer than speaking. The plot, the duplicate love letter which give away hos game, the laundry basket thrown into the Thames, the young couple disapproved of by the girl’s father, the suspicious husband hiring Falstaff to seduce his wife to find out how virtuous she is, the fairies in the forest – it’s all there. This presentation was selected by the Met’s principal conductor because it was conducted by Leonard Bernstein (so you know it’s older than a minute – in fact it was presented and recorded in 1964 and was Bernstein’s Met debut.) The music and the cast were stellar – many names I remember loving in the sixties and some beyond. The male half of the young couple was sung by Mariano Caruso – absolutely zero relation to Enrico – I looked that up, as I’ve been burned too many times thinking unrelated people were related (in my defense, so have announcers.) My email wasn’t bad, so I got through it all and even managed to post a letter the same day I received it. Now I’m off to see Virgil. I will of course check in.
https://apnews.com/article/president-jimmy-carter-2025-grammy-awards-0b8a1c1fa8c8887b945a2b893b7e59e5
This is not all that new, but given that all of our eyes have been on our Democracy, I though some might have missed it. Jimmy Carter – WOW. Everything he did, he did with excellence.
https://www.rmpbs.org/blogs/education/metaphorse-montrose-horse-therapy
I’ve posted about horse therapy before – but this is a new twist, and one that I for one would never have expected. And one which is at least as important as any other method of self-defense.
Patrick Fitzgerald filling in for Belle – at least he’s amusing.
