So, last weekend I went to the Met to see an opera. We saw Tchiakovski's Mazeppa (a four hour extravagenza). At the first intermission, I was amazed. The colors in the sets and costumes and the full orchestra and great voices... I was blown away. By the second intermission, I was getting tired and was less enthused. Into the last act, I was barely staying awake. So, I highly recommend an opera for those of you who like muscials but don't mind dark scripts so long as you stick to two hour plays, not four hour plays.

The really cool thing is that there were subtitles for the lyrics in a small screen in the seat ahead. The sreen was designed so that I could not see the screen of the person on either side of me and could not see the screens ahead of me because of the bar that the sreen was impbedded into.

The other cool thing is that we had nosebleed seats (I think there was one row behind us), yet we could clearly hear the orchestra and voices and I saw no speakers. As near as I could tell, the room was designed acoustically perfect.

All and all a neat experience.