La Rondine

° Had the sala all to myself for a matinee projection of San Francisco Opera's La Rondine. Hadn't so much as heard the thing in decades, had never seen it.
° Excellent sets, costumes registering a bit chintzy on the big screen, singers less aggressively miked vis-à-vis the orchestra than their Met Live counterparts.
° That aria, thrown away so early in the day, able to express all of Room with a View in a few measures.
° Act III did not tug my heartstrings. If Magda had been a trollop and was still a liar, what of it? She's a good egg.

° Afterwards, in the car--New York's governor was confessing himself a trollop and a liar.
° Yea verily, he was an ass to persecute prostitutes in the first place, the quintessential Amerarabian vice. The persecution of Venus, I mean to say.
° But my goodness, if he'd only taken millions of dollars in bribes from special interest groups, Mr. Spitzer could still be neckandneck for the Democratic nomination.
° Nobody's perfect.