From The Bug's Point of View...

"It is amazing what a lot of insect life goes on under your nose when you've got it an inch from the earth."
- Beryl Markham, West With the Night

Well, I suppose it was actually her 3rd husband, Raoul Schumaker, who ghost-, wrote the book. But that doesn't take any magic away from the curiously observant passage (one among many, to be sure) from my favorite book. I have had the privilege of getting to look at things from progressively barer points of view of late. So when I went roaming about Balboa Park and Banker's Hill again over the weekend I decided to snap a few photos of what things would start looking like to me if the last soprano I snapped at in a review should ever successfully land a hex and turn me into...


a toad?

an ant?
a gnat?

or, god forbid, a tenor? Arrrrrgghhhhhhhhhhhh!

Just kidding, of course. I like tenors.... well, some of them, anyhow. :oP I wouldn't mind turning into a tenor if I can sing (and look) like...



Jonas Kaufmann... There's already a good DVD of him as Don Jose in Bizet's Carmen from the ROH - Covent Garden, a really splendidly sung and acted show, though I rather object to how vulgar Carmen (superbly sung and too realistically acted, for me, by Anna Caterina Antonacci) is in that show. That might be how real life crass gypsy women behave, but it makes it hard for me to fantasize about this Carmen.... even though she really is a beautiful (and amazingly fit) woman!

I suspect that there'll be another good Carmen DVD coming out soon from the Zurich Opera with Vesselina Kasarova in the title role, though. As far as I'm concerned, there can never be too many DVDs of Kaufmann (and of Kasarova) around!