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By Root 352 0

beautiful, angry chaos of our beloved Velvet Underground, in the ethereal, tremulant white noise of My Bloody Valentine, or even—and perhaps more to the point, given where you’ll be staying—in the endless tides of traffic moving into and out of Manhattan along the West Side Highway, five hundred feet below my balcony in Washington Heights. You should also note that however “difficult” it may be for listeners to digest, it’s even MORE dangerous to sing; Tristan is the super-double marathon of operas, and its history, like that of Mt. Everest, is littered with the corpses (both literal and figurative) of those singers who made the mistake of attempting it too early in their careers, or lacked the proper training, didn’t have the right kind of voice, or—saddest of all—simply expired under the weight of so much dissonant longing.

In practical terms, what all of this means is that you and C should absolutely, positively resist the temptation to plan anything on Saturday afternoon that doesn’t involve napping, or at most lounging, because curtain is at 7:00 p.m., the opera is five hours long (I KNOW), and dinner won’t be served until 1:00 a.m. or thereabouts. (I’ve learned that most denizens of the opera house, like those of the seediest East Village punk-rock venues, are truly nocturnal, which perhaps explains some of my affinity for both?) Plan to wear whatever you’d like as long as it’s “fabulous” (I offer in a half-ironic tone), but there’s really no such thing as overdressing for the opera—especially on opening night—so when in doubt, DO NOT HOLD BACK. (By the way, I’m also imposing a similar regimen on P, who is equally uninitiated and who will be joining us as MY date.) So brace yourself, little S, it’s going to be an evening you won’t forget too soon; the curtain will rise to lead us to new lands from which we—like so many before us—will return both destroyed and cleansed, knowing we’ll never be the same! xoxo M

2

Through Its Street Names, the City Is a Mystic Cosmos

NEW YORK CITY, 1960. Anna Prus stepped out of her apartment building onto Seventy-fourth Street, where she paused to glance back at Central Park, which looked opaque and grainy like an old newsreel. It had been snowing for days, but a sallow, expectant glow emanating from the crenellated perimeter of the park told her the storm was nearing an end. While she did not relish the idea of negotiating a trip downtown, the transformation of the city into a tundra, with squalls of powder and amorphous mounds where there had once been cars, mailboxes, and shrubs, struck her as the perfect accompaniment to the magic, improbable turn the day had taken, now that she was about to make her Isolde debut at the Metropolitan Opera.

Though Anna was not an unknown, she had to this point in her career been relegated to smaller houses and (except for some minor roles) hired by the Met as an alternate to the type of leading soprano she had always wanted to be. But as sometimes happened with singers her age—Anna was forty—her voice, after six years at the conservatory and over fifteen more of training, auditioning, and performing, had at last blossomed, giving her reason to believe that she had found her calling in the Wagnerian repertory. Which is not to say her future had been unfurled like a red carpet; if anything, her reputation as a dependable but hardly breathtaking talent still preceded her, and for this current production, she had been brought in only to “cover” the Isolde and so had expected—as she had always done in the past—to spend her nights in the wings, anxiously hoping and not hoping (because she was not one to wish ill health or misfortune on anyone) that she would finally get her chance.

This time her luck was better; from the start, the lead struggled with the role and after much gossip and speculation had finally canceled, which meant Anna was going on tonight and possibly for the entire run if she could deliver the type of performance the Met general manager, Rudolf Bing (having made a point of attending one of her cover rehearsals in the