Dear Chuck

I has been a while since I wrote you, but lately I have been thinking so much about you that I felt now was the time for another missive.
This deals with opera and, frankly, there is no-one I can talk to about these things.
The people we knew here in PV would probably not even know how to spell it, and Flemming and Alexis are not great fans of the genre, so that leaves you...and me.
Do you remember when once we saw a production on the telly of Cenerentola, and we both fell in love with the tenor who sang like a bird and was, joy of joys, slender. Well, it seems he has finally made his Met debut and sang The Daughter of the Regiment. I caught a video on YouTube of him singing the nine high C's, effortlessly. AND running about in front of his fellow soldiers. Absolutely smashing. You would have died. Wrong term; you would have loved it to pieces.
I looked him up. He is Juan Diego Florez, from Peru.
And he did an encore of the nine C's, which had not been done since Pavarotti was in his hay day, which is quite some time ago.
The other operatic happening was more of an accident. I was channel surfing ( I know, I know; you always hated that ) and found that Bravo Channel was showing I Puritani.
I jumped for joy as I remembered all the times you and I had listened to the whole thing, one fantastic aria following a duet and leading into a quartet. all of it wonderful, all of it musically sublime.
Not so with this production. A Met production as it turned out. Staid and mothbally. And boring.
The soprano, some Russian dame, Anna Netrebko, very well put together and very pretty in a common sort of way was dull. I swear she must have demanded that her tempi be brought down and, instead of being emotional and wonderful, they became .......BORING.
I read , later, after a search on the web for this miserable production, a glowing review in the NYTimes of her and an explanation for the production. It was indeed hauled out of the moth balls, shaken up a tiny little bit, and presented to the world. Time to put it back in some new moth balls, says I.
I don't think I have suddenly developed a tin ear; she was bad. Just as bad as Jessye Norman was good when we first heard her, or Beverly when she made us cry singing about her little table in Manon Lescaut.
You will just have to trust me, but then this was an area where we rarely disagreed, where we seemed to follow the same line, musical or otherwise.
But I do miss our times discussing the finer points, and I do so miss you.
Well, time to start din-dins and then a night of mindless entertaining ( and drinking ) .
My love to you
Alan.