Sydney Padua

You put up with a lot living in London– basically, things in general not working at all (transport, weather, infrastructure, household mold, etc.). On the other hand, I can personally emerge from work any day of the week and randomly decide to walk to the opera.

There’s this impression that opera is boring. I strongly disagree with that, but it must be admitted that “La Clemenza di Tito”, despite 2 and a half hours of glorious Mozart, is pretty much 2 and a half hours of dull…. you just can’t get a whole lot of traction out of everyone agreeing that the central character is a great guy, and then Tito going on for a while about how hard it is being so awesome.

The main liveliness in this production came from the guy behind us, who chose the most tender moments to try to join the trombone section with nose-blowings of amazing volume, force, and musicality.

To prove that opera is not boring though: everyone in the world emailed me this:

Now that IS awesome. What makes this clip so exciting is how on the knife-edge it was.. he could so easily have dropped the audience, but he just picked them up and swept them away with the force of his love for the music. Inspiring!

If you want to hear the whole thing, here’s Mario del Monaco giving a television studio performance enough horsepower to fill Wembly stadium: