Project Opera, Facebook, and Planning Commission

It was a busy week and weekend as M went through final rehearsals and performances for Brundibar – a short opera performed by her MN Project Opera group. She had a great time and it was a wonderful performance, but it monopolized the week – as those things do – and now we are suffering from post-performance withdrawal and engaging in some serious homework catch-up.

The performance was actually a “double feature” – with both Brundibar, peformed by the younger Ragazzi group, and Iolanthe performed by the older kids.

Brundibar is the story of Little Joe and his sister, Annette who are in search of milk for their sick mother. While searching, they are stopped by the evil organ-grinder, Brundibar and only by working together with the other children can they overthrow him. Notably this children's opera was performed 55 times at the Theresienstadt concentration camp during World War II.

Iolanthe, or The Peer and the Peri is a light-hearted story about Strephon, a shepherd, who wants to marry Phyllis, a Ward of Chancery. Phyllis does not know that Strephon is half fairy and when she sees Strephon kissing what looks like a young woman, she assumes the worst. But her "rival" turns out to be none other than Strephon's own mother, Iolanthe, a fairy - and fairies never grow old.
But Phyllis' guardian, the Lord Chancellor, and half the peers in the House of Lords are sighing after her. Quickly the peers and the fairies are almost at war, but all is happily sorted out in the end, thanks to the "subtleties of the legal mind".

[M is the baker in the picture.]

They were two very different performances. Brundibar was quite dark – though it had a happy ending. Iolanthe – by Gilbert and Sullivan – was much “lighter” as operas go. The kids did great!

We saw two of the three performances, and would have liked to attend the final performance on Saturday but actually were invited to a joint birthday party for friends of ours (our vet and his wife) – and I can count on one hand the number of events that the Hobbled Wife and I attended on our own in the past year.

Shifting gears here – it doesn’t do much good to apologize for the lack of posts. I feel like I’m at a crossroads with blogging. In the past I enjoyed posting both short and long items – stuff that was “breaking news” and somewhat more thoughtful pieces. Now that everyone I know is on Facebook – all the time – I feel that the blog doesn’t compete in the short, breaking news category – and I feel too much pressure when doing longer posts to say something important or significant.

Perhaps the best thing might be to forget Facebook – I find it annoying for a number of reasons – and blog like Facebook never existed.

Final gear shifting of the evening – I was appointed to the Roseville Planning Commission for a three year term. I’m very excited. I attended my first meeting last week. It was a short one hour meeting (the previous month’s meeting ran to 11:00 p.m. and included a 2½ hour public hearing on a neighborhood business redevelopment.) As I excited as I am – and I’m sure that it could prove to be a wonderful source of “blog fodder”, I’ll probably not blog much about the Commission. I think it best to let that business take place in its proper public forum. Although if I make a fool of myself I’ll be sure to post a link to the archived webstreamed meetings so you can laugh along with me.