Met M?ire O’Brien at the coffee shop across the street from the Met, visited for a bit, then went joined her husband Mark and their friend Alice to hear her friend Michael Forest sing Borsa in a dress rehearsal of Rigoletto. The sets were outstanding, the costumes sumptuous, the lighting a bit dark, but the staging was atrocious. The chorus anchored themselves to their respective spots a full minute before they started singing; half of them looked as they they had never been on a stage before in their life. In Act II when the guard are leading Monterone away, the sargeant yells “make way”…to no one, since Rigoletto and Gilda have hidden themselves, and no on else is in the room. But Juan Pons sounded fabulous, and I liked the guy who sang the Duke as well, although he sounded like he was tired or fighting a cold at times.
Mark took Alice to the airport after the first act, and Michael joined us in the audience for the third act. After the show he went back to get notes, and M?ire and I had a late lunch at a Chinese place north of Lincoln Center…of course, I *had* to order a dish with a name like Mysterious Chicken, I had no choice! We chatted for a long time, then we took the crosstown bus back to the east side; she continued on home, and I gathered up my stuff at Eb’s and got his mail and headed down to Jersey.
Eb picked me up at the Metro Park station, having just gotten his brothers Hossein and Ali at the airport. Everybody else was already at the house except for Kim, Ahmad’s wife, whose flight got in a bit later. We talked and commiserated a while, then Eb’s girlfriend Costanza came and got me and I crashed at her place (since the house was packed). She got her new car (Audi A4) just a few hours before Eb got his Acura, and her quick decisionmaking I think helped spur Eb to action, since he had been shopping for months.