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AS A CHRISTMAS GIFT my yard man and I got tickets,* and last night we went to the opera. It proved to be a most delightful pastime in the dead of winter!



I sincerely wished to have more to share with
you, Dear Reader, than these furtive little snippets.



But, seeing as how the yard man was hissing at
me to put the camera away this very second!
and threatening to hop right up from his seat
and find another elsewhere if I did not comply,
I whispered back: Stay cool! (Although,
considering the frigid air he'd walked through
after dropping me at the door of the opera
house and finding a parking spot, I suppose
Don't get your knickers in a knot! might
have been a better admonishment) and
consequently I made a big deal of stashing
the camera.

But then! The poor man--he was suffering
from a cold and a very bad cough, and much
later in the show, as two singers were warbling
"Baby It's Cold Outside,"he went into such
paroxysms of coughing that he did indeed
get out of his seat and walk away (he was on
the aisle).

Shortly he returned with a small plastic
bottle of water and was occupied with
removing the cap and taking a swig. He
never noticed what I held ever-so-slyly
in my lap.



Therefore, aha, I managed to get an adorable
smidgen of a duet from Puccini's Die Zauberflote.
It lasts about as long as it took for the yard man
to glance my way.
And then, well, that was the end of the show
(at least for you, Reader Dear!)



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*Our son and our daughter-in-law were
the givers--I'm bowing my thanks to them!