By the time we headed to NYC for dinner at Café Fiorello with Ina and Marcel the fog had cleared as most of the snow was gone. We went on to the opera after the dinner.
We heard Verdi’s Falstaff, his final work and only major comic opera. Falstaff, the character, was created by Shakespeare in Henry IV and Henry V and reappeared in The Merry Wives of Windsor at Queen Elizabeth’s request. Falstaff, the man, is an aging knight with no knightly instincts except a sense of entitlement. He is an obese, vain, venal, misogynistic, boastful, cowardly, dissolute, gluttonous, self-indulgent thief but amusing and witty. His comeuppance is well earned and much deserved but, at the same time, sad. Baritone Ambrogio Maestri is maestriful in the role of Falstaff.
Us New Jersey residents don’t have to look far for a modern reincarnation of Sir John, no further than Sir Chris of the Bridge.
Working backwards, the previous night we heard the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Newark at NJPAC. It was an all Beethoven program, starting with The Overture to the Creatures of Prometheus. Pinchas Zukerman conducted and was the soloist for the Violin Concerto. The Fifth Symphony completed the program.
After a few inches of snow the day before, we have a warm rain that turns the snow into fog.
Bally says, "How come I see the air?"
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