Berlioz and Beatrice come to Seattle

Didn’t get a blip yet today and we came  early to hear the lecture before the opera.....it’s the first time a Berlioz opera has been performed here and this is a grand collaboration of opera , a theater company and the Seattle symphony director to put on Beatrice and Benedict , based on Shakespeare’s “Much Ado about Nothing “ that Berlioz adored.    It’s great fun... !!   (blipping this during intermission.  Might add more later. ) 

Sort of half play , half opera, the actors were miked for all the spoken dialogue but that was turned off for the singing, as usual for opera.  There were super titles for the singing only --all was in English altho Berlioz wrote his in French.   Apparently he knew about all the different ways to "be in love" from personal experience. 

The photo is a piece in lower level of the opera house commissioned in 1984 of painter Michael Spafford , one of my very favorite teachers in art school at the UW in the 70s.  Based on the Wallace Stevens poem, 13 ways of looking at a Blackbird, there are 13 panels.

This is all one good reason why we are glad to live in the city!!