Tosca at The Met

Patricia Racette is in Giacomo Puccini's 'Tosca' which I saw Tuesday night at the Metropolitan Opera House.  She will be performing it 6 times with a quartet of leading men on alternating nights.  The NY Times praises her " richly expressive voice and raw emotion".  She is a fine actress but as the Times says "her voice is not opulent or unique".  This is also the farewell performance of Paul Plishka who plays the sacristan.  Since 1967 he has performed at the Met 1600 times.
The opera is based on a play by Victorien Sardou who wrote 70 plays, all successful and now forgotten.  Tosca was a great hit for Sarah Bernhardt, with 3000 performances in France alone.  The story concerns 4 main characters: Angelotti, an escaped political prisoner who is pursued by Scarpia, the head of the secret police who lusts after Tosca, who is loved by and loves Cavaradossi a painter.  When Cavaradossi helps hide Angelotti, Scarpia arrests him and tortures him until Tosca agrees to sleep with him and tell him where Angelotti is hiding.  She tells; then stabs Scarpia.  Angelotti kills himself rather then be arrested.  Cavaradossi is executed and Tosca jumps off a tower, spectacularly staged, rather then be captured.  The end.

The score is beguiling and the opera is one of the most popular.
Favorite parts:  The Te Deum with a triple chorus, an orchestra with bells, an organ and 2 canons.  The tenor's aria "E lucevan le stelle", "And the stars were shining" in act 3, and the soprano's aria in act 2 "Vissi d'arte" living her life for love and art.
Another favorite of mine: the company, 100 orchestra members and 80 members of the chorus.   
Today's notable birthdays:
Wayne Gretsky, Samuel Adams, Anita Baker, Nicolae Ceausescu, Henry Jaglom, Angela Davis, Jules Feiffer, Ellen De Generes, Douglas McArthur, Akio Morita, co-founder of Sony, James McCord, Watergate burglar, Roger Vadim, Anne Jeffreys, Jimmy Van Heusen, and Me.

The News

It's all bad today.
I went to the opera last night and got home late and into bed at about 2:30.  Then the cats started in at five AM.  So it's food, water, clean litter box and back to sleep.  But noooo!  They won 't let up; not until I'm up and out of bed.  I swear I almost threw Paris out the window.  I had closed the bedroom door but he was banging on it with his head and meowing, constantly.  I was P O'ed but not just for waking me up but also fighting with his brother.  He was so bad; Troy was cowering under the chair and hissing at him.  The first time that's happened.
I need a cat whisperer or cat shrink.  They're both sleeping, now, and in my bed of course.
That's my bad news.  I'm exhausted and tomorrow's my birthday.  I want to be fresh and chipper for my birthday.   Well as much as I can be at 68.
And in the rest of the world it's not much better.  Those republican party debates.  I mean, really disgusting candidates.  Characters from a Walt Disney movie, happy=Rick Perry, dopey=Cain, grouchy=Gingrich, and there's no Snow White.  Gingrich, as they say, is 'surging in the polls' because he berates the media for asking about his marriages.  Simply stated he cheated on his first two wives.  While the first wife had cancer and the second wife had MS.  The third wife had a 6 year affair with him while he was married.  All the time she was playing the role of the good catholic.  So good that now Newt is a catholic and has found God.  Son of a gun, who knew all this time, god was in Calista's sheets!  Don't people remember what Newt did to Clinton for his peccadilloes?  Why would anyone listen to them?

The real craziness is not the hypocrisy.
Mitt Romney wants us to believe that during his life he has had fears of losing his livelihood.  Last year he earned  from investments, he doesn't actually have a job, almost $60,000 a day!
And there's even more craziness in the audience.  They cheered when Cain said the unemployed needed to take a bath and get a job.  They cheered when Newt said  school children should do janitorial jobs in school to learn job skills.  They cheered when Ron Paul said if a person can't afford to buy medications that's their own fault.  Who are these people?  White, affluent, mostly male, christian, presumably.  That also describes me and my friends but we are at the opposite end of those political views.  These people may look angry, but they're really scared.  They hate Obama because he is the face of the new America.  White America is 72% of the total population.  Ten years ago they were 75%.  These people feel threatened.
I can't believe any of these guys will win, because that audience is already the minority.  One last thing about the candidates.  Has anyone else noticed that they all have strange ways of walking.