Friday, September 23, 2011

A Night at the Opera

I went to the opera last night with Kathleen Travers, a Sunland-Tujunga resident who has mostly devoted herself to preservation issues, now serving your community on the Samoa Committee. We saw Cosi fan Tutte, one of the three fabled Mozart-Da Ponte collaborations. I reviewed the opera here.

It's not unusual for Kathleen and I to go to the opera--we've been doing it since before LA Opera was founded, in fact. Back before LA Opera, to see opera in town, you had to wait until the New York City Opera came around in November. I think the first opera Kathleen and I saw together was Andrea Chenier circa 1981. It could have been even earlier--but I know it was well before she pulled her first advanced arts degree from USC.

Kathleen and I got a chance to take in the last sunset of summer together, from the second floor balcony of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. This is a goony tradition of mine that I've had going since 1979: I always make a point of it to watch the last sunset of the summer. Kathleen has known about it for all that time, but she hasn't shared a "last sunset of summer" with me since...1980!

I thought I would also step in here at this blog while my other longtime community friend (and lifelong area resident) Terre Ashmore deals with some administrative and business matters on the home front. I haven't quite known Terre as long as I have Kathleen, but I first became acquainted with her in 1994 when I had some good ties to the Natural History Museum. I knew Terre as a habitat botanist back then--she did talks to some groups about botany and also installed habitats for the LA Zoo. She was the person who introduced me to the Theodore Payne Foundation, back in 1994, which remains a tremendous resource for so many people today. She also started the first community garden to which I ever belonged.

This community, Sunland-Tujunga, has some incredibly amazing human resources, including lots of people who don't wear their past accomplishments on their sleeves. It's been my good fortune to be connected to some of them for a long time and others in more recent years. I'm honored to step in here for a little spell!

3 comments:

Duh! said...

Cosi Fan Tutte! Opera! Culture comes to S-T!

Welcome, we could use some.

Duh! said...

Cosi fan Tutte! See what I mean.

Brock Ba'jer said...

Goodbye Sweet Summer with all her gifts: whose day of celebration was June 21 and her last day was September 22 (and Autumn's first was September 23). Now comes the Autumn and may her harvest be rich. It's time for a dance or two on the moonlit stage of The Canyon...

Thank you Joseph for this view of a world so many miss: Opera, Solstice, and Equinox.