Guilty Pleasures -or- Contact Your Travel Agent

So, I have decided I cannot wait until Fidelio in March or Lohengrin in April. I need me some Karita Mattila STAT!

So, I am getting on a plane (Southwest, no less..) and heading to Chicago, just for the evening of Dec. 3rd, to see the final performance of Manon Lescaut at the Chicago Lyric Opera.

I promised myself I'd cool it on the Puccini this year--because seriously folks, enough is enough. But what is a boy to do when faced with the likes of Mattila singing Manon Lescaut, Deborah Voigt in the Met's Tosca this Spring and Aprile Millo (read: Millo's cover) singing the final performance of the same opera? And Ruth Ann Swenson, who remains a personal favorite, is Boheme-ing it up at the Met the next couple of weeks...

I'll tell you what a boy does. Buys a cheap ticket and gets his ass in there to enjoy some f-ing Puccini.

Also on the traveling for opera front, Alex will be seeing a production of Don Giovanni next week at The Estates Theatre in Prague. Needless to say, he will not be flying Southwest. Beyond that, I will leave the fun of filling us in on that particular adventure to him. AFTER he completes the GRE, which the poor boy is taking precisely as I type this.

Truth is, we are both visiting family/friends and happen to be doing so in cities with attendance-worthy operatic events. Lucky us!