Oh Little Butterfly

Last night I returned to my ol’ stomping grounds, NYC Opera, to catch a night of gut wrenching operatic fanfare. The place looks spiffy with its sleek new box office but what was Mr. Koch thinking with those new seats!? During my tenure in production I logged plenty of rehearsal hours, both consciously note taking and much to the chagrin of several directors shamelessly napping, to know the uber comfort of the State Theater’s Orch Row S’s plush seats however now in the newly renovated house I could hardly wedge my “lusciousness” between the arm rests and because of the very low narrow seat backs my shoulders were tenuously hovering between those of my neighboring seat mates. No I did not widen - actually I have shrunken. I am certain that this rump space reduction is solely the result of the installation of narrower seats to make up for the loss of several rows due to the orchestra pit extension. I guess we all have to sacrifice a bit for the arts.

Anyways after some wiggling I squished myself down into the hip vice, a.k.a. Seat 35, and settled in for 3 hours of broken hearted Japanese girl vs. douche bag American sailor. Good lord Pinkerton, could you be more if an irresponsible a-hole? Butterfly totally cut him a deal (spoiler alert) with Pinkerton only serving a life time sentence of guilt for Butterfly’s honorable death. Now a-days you know Butterfly would be all up in the Us Weekly with a headline, “Benjamin Franklin is my Baby’s Daddy!”, or Suzuki would be releasing their ‘secretive’ sex tape the day before Pinkerton’s admiral promotion. Ahhh how the times have changed.