Mira looked at the CD shelf. Mira’s main thing has always been box sets, and most of them have been picked. Then she looked up. Opera. ‘Want BIIIIG ones!’ so I lifted her up, and she grabbed a bright blue and red box… containing two versions of Modest Mussorgsky’s ‘Boris Godounov’. Celia grabbed the first disc by ‘The Coral’, Van Morrison’s greatest hits and I had a few more Nono discs still to rip.

While I was working at Barnes and Noble here in Seattle, a co-worker (Mark) also worked as the main liaison for donor relations with the Seattle Opera. A few months after I got here, the director of Seattle Opera had to cancel one of his preview talks for ‘Lakme’ and I stepped in at the last minute to give an audience of about 50 a heads up about what the opera was about. It was quite fun, and after that Mark kept an eye out for donor tickets that weren’t being used (usually for the dress rehearsals). Tamiko and I saw a number of operas this way, and ‘Boris Godounov’ was one of them. The set was brilliant, filled with reds, golds and candles, and the performance was great. If you have talked to me about the arts in Seattle, you probably know that I hold the Seattle Opera in the highest regard. While they don’t program as much new music or commission works like I think a major arts powerhouse should, they make up for it by putting on productions that are top of the line, and the singers are world-class.

Since seeing so many operas, I have found myself listening to less and less. Italian ones are fun still, since they are, well, Italian opera and just great to listen to. But listening to ‘Boris Godounov’, especially after seeing it the way we did, really shows how much you miss by listening to opera. I wish I had gotten into opera about ten years after I did. If I had, I would probably have a large collection of opera DVDs rather then CDs, and while this still wouldn’t capture the enormity of seeing an opera live, it would do better then the CDs would.

And as I’ve said many times, this is just the problem with recorded music in general. There are, of course, exceptions. And the track ‘Dreaming of You’ on The Coral’s first album might be one of them. Great British Invasion style rock, and the 19 year old lead singer sounds like he has decades more behind the voice on that record. The singing on this track is up there with John’s on ‘Twist and Shout’. I’m glad it was caught on record, because there is a good chance performances like this can’t be repeated.