life's impediments.

Home for two days and free from work's toxic hell.

Elis Regina.

carmen.

My "new" CD recording of Bizet's Carmen was waiting in the mailbox when I got home last night. It's the one with Maria Callas from 1962. The orchestra is conducted by Georges Prêtre and is the best, most vivid performance IMHO, knowing the orchestral score almost by memory. I had this recording in the 80's (and several others) on tape, and used to listen to it on my Walkman, driving around the Bay Area. Now, the prerecorded tapes are worthless and don't play anymore, as prerecorded tapes never lasted more than a few years at best: record company rip-offs; just like everything else in wonderful, corporate Hamerica. The TDK-D tapes I used to record Live From the Met broadcasts for many years all still work sparklingly well, having supplied three decades of enjoyment.

I'm listening right now. Act 1 is just concluding. Opera is so terrific. You friends who have not experienced it and plunged in whole-heartedly are really missing out on a great emotional and self-revelatory treat. I stopped listening to opera for many years but in the last two years or so my interest has revived. I'm wondering how and why I ever left it, well actually I know. I won't go there. I'm amazed how far I moved away from who I was, and am now coming back to myself, or at least remembering, to some degree.

"Yeah, right, Don Jose", you say.
OK, ok.