Thought there was intermittent sunlight today, the persistence of the clouds has cheered me, and I retain considerable hope that tomorrow will bring actual rain. The breezes which have rustled the new leaves all evening certainly smell of rain. It probably won't arrive for some while, though. Venus is currently on display along with several lesser stars that occupy various gaps in the clouds. I keep poking my head out to see if the stars have vanished yet, which would indicate a thickening overcast. I hope it rains before morning. I like listening to rain falling in the dark.
Here's a story about a kitty who commutes, and goes quite a distance, too. 400 meters is more than a quarter of a mile. That's farther than I get from my house most days. But then I don't have such a convenient transit line through my neighborhood.
Somebody has uploaded to You Tube a bunch of clips of the Los Angeles Lyric Opera's production of Auber's Manon Lescaut staged at the Los Angeles Theatre last year. This clip is a couple of minutes of what appears to be the opening of Act I. It looks as though it was taken on a home video camera stationed in the front row of the mezzanine loge (which would put it about sixty feet from the stage apron, if I recall correctly, and not too high up to have a watchable angle.) The sound is pretty sucky in this clip. There are more clips uploaded by the same You Tube user, and the sound improves a bit—in some of them, at least.
I watched the three parts of the duet from Act II. It seems a decent performance considering it's by an opera company from a town that's always been crap when it comes to opera (even little San Diego has long given stronger support to opera than Los Angeles does.) There are costumes but no sets to speak of. I'd like to have been there, partly to see the Los Angeles Theatre in use again, but I think I'd have enjoyed the performance, too. The company is doing three operas for its 2006–2007 season, but their location has been changed to the old Palace Theatre across the street, which is a more intimate hall having about 1100 seats available, none more than 80 feet from the stage. Probably a good idea. I don't think the performances last year managed to fill the 2000+ seats of the Los Angeles.
Download is done. Now to see what else they've been hiding from me.