Auf wiedersehn, Wagner...

It's hard in some ways to pack up at Bard and come home, but on the other hand, we live in a dorm, and I'm attached to my creature comforts. At least this time I took an actual lamp, and a big pillow so I could sit up in bed, and two bouquets of flowers. I meant to take a dhurrie rug but I forgot it.

I meant to post up at Bard last week, but I inadvertently erased all the photos on my iPhone. I was transferring them to my Mac at home, so they're all here, but they were inaccessible up at Bard, so I didn't get to post. Well, I could have, but I think posts with no photos are kind of boring. Unless there are good stories.

So I thought I'd post some random artsy photos from the week. (Keep in mind they're only iPhone pictures!)

The one at the top was just some interesting shadows I saw on the side of the Ward Manor gatehouse. I somehow thought that the shadow of the lantern was a touch ironic. And pretty.

The one below is one that I snuck over the top of my music of Leon Botstein, with the men in the chorus in the background. When you realize that that's like three rows of men and the semicircle of the chorus goes all the way around the room in a big arc (I'm at the end of the semicircle on the other side), you can tell how big a group it is.



The music is part of the vocal score to Die Meistersinger. The thing about singing Wagner, and Brahms for that matter, one of whose pieces (Triumphlied) we did on the same program--it has three dynamic levels for most of the time: 1) loud, 2) stun and 3) kill. At least for this program we didn't have any siegs that I remember, though we did have a lot of heils. I kind of hope I don't have to sing any Wagner again for a long while, by which time I will be too old. But it was kind of fun. Die Meistersinger is a very cute opera, for Wagner.