Year: 2004

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.

Got up New Year’s Day and went to the Baglery at 30th and 3rd. The Times had had an article on Tuesday about best old-style bagels in town, and this was one of the three places mentioned. There was a long line, but most were doing take-out and I got a table inside. It was good, but really not all that much better than the fare at Einstein Brothers.

Wandered over to Lincoln Center to see if there were any return tickets for Henry IV. There were only about six other people in line at the time (1:45), so since I had my book, I decided to wait. I ended up getting a ticket in the balcony. While waiting for them to open the auditorium, I kept thinking the girl at the souvenir counter looked familiar. I went up to her and we played the ‘where do we know each other from’ game for about ten minutes, then figured out I met her, Abby Seible, when I was subbing at St. Martin’s this summer, right before she moved up to NYC.

The play itself was spectacular. All the performances were strong, but Kevin Kline as Falstaff especially stood out. The set had all these pieces that slid in and out and worked very well. At one point a bunch of hay was dropped from the ceiling before a scene in a stable, and the smell wafting through the theater really helped set it…just glad they didn’t go for more realism. 😉

After the show I had a voicemail from M?ire O’Brien, asking if I’d like to go see a dress rehearsal at the Met the next day. You can guess my answer. I talked with Eb, and he asked if I could stay for the funeral on Saturday, so I called Continental and got my flight changed from Friday evening to Sunday morning. I had dinner at Peter’s Diner on 3rd at 52nd, I think. Gyros platter was good, but just three strips of meat? I’ll stick to Bibas, thanks.

I arrived at Newark at noon on New Year’s Eve. Eb Keshavarz was there to pick me up in his day-old Acura TL…a very nice car indeed, Bluetooth phone aware (will route calls through the car’s audio system!), and navigation package (whose breathy female voice his girlfriend Costanza can’t stand 😉 ). We went to the hospital where his father was in CCU and visited with him for a while, then had a late lunch at a chicken place in Spanish Harlem. He dropped me off at Columbus Circle, but it was such a nice day I decided to walk through Central Park to get to Eb’s place on 67th and 1st. I dropped off my stuff, read for a bit, then, counter to my nature, decided to get to the theater early.

That decision was, in a word, fortuitous.
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