Special

I'm off to Sweeney Todd tonight.  Although I am loathe to have such a late night mid-week, a local college offers their last dress rehearsal as a "High School Night".  Instead of charging admission, they're asking for donations of canned goods to be given to a local shelter.   That deal is too nice and the show is too popular among my theater students to pass up.  I agreed to chaperone them on the condition that they arrange for their own rides.  They're very excited, and I'm curious to see what they think of the play as compared to the movie version.

On a mostly unrelated note, the New York Times made note of the encore we got to witness:

Arts, Briefly

Encore at the Met Pleases the Audience

By DANIEL J. WAKIN; Compiled by ADAM W. KEPLER

Published: April 1, 2012

The tenor sang a number and the audience loved it, so he sang it again. Such encores at the Metropolitan Opera have become such a rarity in recent decades that aficionados — and press offices — take special note. The repeat performance took place on Saturday, when Juan Diego Flórez was appearing in Donizetti’s “Elisir d’Amore.” At the end of the aria “Una furtiva lagrima” the audience responded with so much enthusiasm that Mr. Flórez repeated it. The encore was also heard by millions of listeners because the performance, the last show of the run, was broadcast on radio. Within hours the Met sent out a news release pointing out the encore and mentioning that Mr. Flórez was the last Met performer to offer one (in 2008) and that Luciano Pavarotti was the previous singer to do so (in 1994). The Met had banned encores in recent decades amid a more serious performance atmosphere. But the current general manager, Peter Gelb, has loosened the reins in what he has called an effort to make opera more exciting and entertaining. Encores were common in the 19th century and the early 20th.