Toreador, en garde… Toreador! Toreador!

At the last moment and not great expense, I went to see Carmen at the San Francisco Opera last night. It was three hours and forty-five minutes long very good. Arriving just in the nick of time, we were forced to effectively sprint up 78 flights of stairs to the cheap seats.

At the opera, you will see an interesting phenomenon, by the way. If you ever want to see very well dressed, aristocratic, largely white, refined men and women scatter like cockroaches under a 2 AM kitchen light, dim the lights subtly and ring a series of unobtrusive tones signifying the impending start of Act I. There is something poetically grotesque about seeing a 60-ish woman, in resplendent in high-nosed high-society stoll, run awkwardly on 3-inch heels likes she hasn’t since sprinting for that last cupcake at her 5th birthday party…or at the last opera she got caught in the bathroom in.