Paved with stars?

Here is the obit I wrote for this blog just before Ariadne, though having taken a few months off, I'm wondering if my hesitation in posting it is a sign I shouldn't let it go quite yet. Anyway I love a valedictory, so put on Haydn's Farewell or Wotan's Farewell or any other you've got by the Brunswick, and if I end up posting tomorrow, you can't say you didn't have time to figure out that I'm flighty and inconsistent.

***

Five years is a long time to do anything.

Well it's not quite five years. Four and a half. But sometimes life hands you bookends. It appears the first thing I wrote up on here--no, wait, the first thing I blogged is what I typed first, and I don't see any reason to disavow the medium with all its idiocies and minor glories--was Ariadne. It was October, 2005 in the same beloved production with Urmana, Villars, and Damrau. "By the end of the best evenings at the opera, of course," this all began, "you feel as if you'd run a marathon."

The last thing I'm going to blog is also going to be Ariadne. [This did not turn out to be true exactly, though La Cieca posted a Wellsungian chat about it between me and the Squirrel.]

I'm not giving it up altogether. I've gotten too attached to it. But I've come to despair a little of writing another review of a production I already told you about a year ago and trying to make some little joke because it otherwise feels stale. And maybe more importantly, I think I need to be doing something else with my writing, but that's less for you to worry about.

So as far as My Favorite Intermissions is concerned, the gongs done gung as I am wont to say during actual intermissions. I'm hoping to write things elsewhere, if asked. But as far as this is concerned, in the form in which you have indulged it, I think the time has come.

Insofar as I leave you, it is with a few words from Onegin, always dear to me.

While all those cupids, devils, serpents,
Upon the stage still romp and roar,
And while the weary band of servants
Still sleeps on furs at carriage door;
And while the people still are tapping,
Still sniffling, coughing, hissing, clapping;
And while the lamps both in and out
Still glitter grandly all about;
And while the horses, bored at tether,
Still fidget, freezing, in the snow,
And coachmen by the fire's glow
Curse masters and beat palms togeher;
[D'Annato] now has left the scene
And driven home to change and preen.

This intermission is ending. Enjoy the opera.

With gratitude for your attention,
MD'

Next up: either a spring roundup or nothin'.