Auntie B's Wax

The Ordway Theater

This weekend I went to the opera with Charlotte and our mom.  It was the perfect opportunity for me to wear my great-grandma’s mink stole.  Yes, it’s a real mink stole and please don’t throw any figurative paint on it because you think I’m being abusive to animals.  As I said, it was my great-grandma’s, so those little minks were dead long before standing up for animal rights was in vogue.

We saw Turandot, only my most favorite opera ever.  I’m a little sentimental about this opera because a long time ago I heard the aria Nessun Dorma on a rented movie and fell in love with it.  I ran the credits of the movie really slow so I could find out what that great opera piece was.  Quite a while later I saw Turandot was going to be performed at our own Ordway Theater, so Charlotte and I went.  It was the first opera I ever attended and was so wonderful I wept openly.

Ever since then Charlotte and I, along with our mom, have seen one opera every year.  For a while there were some husbands accompanying us, but they dropped out after a while.  It’s a nice girl date that gives us a chance to dress up, and afterwards we get some good girlie food.

Turandot finally returned and it was better than ever.  The set was really cool, the costumes were so bright and colorful, the orchestra was in excellent form, and the performers on stage were fabulous.  We had our girlie food too.  Mine was a bowl of mushroom wild rice soup, a focaccia roll and a very large piece of cherry almond cheesecake.

It’s nice to get a little culture once in a while.   Plus I’ll have that beautiful aria running through my head for a while.  Vincero!