travelswithalice

What an adventure!

It was "shall we stay or shall we go?" (Mayor Bloomberg had repeatedly exhorted the people of New York to stay home) right up to the moment I nervously stepped out of the taxi onto the mess of a pavement outside Lincoln Center. I hung on for dear life to my two escorts, Stuart and Erle, who half dragged, half carried me across the snowy, icy, slushy courtyard into the safety of Arpeggio Bar in Avery Fisher Hall.






A bottle of wine quickly doused any danger of hypothermia. It had to be Rodney Strong Cabernet Sauvignon on the recommendation of Pavel, star waiter and sworn friend to Russian diva Netrebko. He had vehemently and theatrically rejected Stuart's initial choice. Gagged and sputtered, almost fainted! What a character!



RIGOLETTO was well worth the battle. It was magnificently sung and brilliantly staged.

It would be difficult of course to screw up any production that had access to top-drawer performers like soprano Diana Damrau and tenor Piotr Beczala. But there was a moment of uncertainty about the whole Las Vegas thing when the tenor launched into "Questa o Quella," the first major aria of the evening.

A bevy of masked showgirls wearing blue tights, colorful feathered tails, and not much else waved quivering yellow and orange ostrich feather fans all around him. It felt a bit too much like an all-gay musical revue and there was nervous laughter from the audience.

It must have been about halfway through Act I when the awkwardness started to dissipate and everyone began to buy into the idea of a Rat Pack Rigoletto. The Italian libretto was translated into American slang, thus completing the morphing of the opera from 16th century Mantua to 1960's Sin City.

The real triumph of the daring re-imagining of the opera classic came at the very end. Stuffing the body of the dying Gilda into the trunk of a gleaming Cadillac was the genius touch. It was a powerfully indelible image of tragedy in the debauched world in which Rigoletto was a mere fringe-player.


The subway was the preferred mode of transportation for most of the freezing mob that poured out of the Met shortly before midnight. For Stuart and me, the cold was the least of our problems; we were sufficiently bundled up and insulated against the severe weather.

We determinedly brushed away the rain and snow from our face and eyes as we trudged along the one block from the station to our hotel. The real challenge was making sure we didn't slip on the icy ground. It was sweet victory when we finally sat, wine in hand, and watched the wintry street scene in the safety of the hotel bar.