It's an excellent day for soup, too, as the snow has barely retreated despite hours and hours of fairly warm sunlight streaming down on it. I begin to suspect that the snow might be another thing that's new-fangled. Maybe it's got some sort of preservative in it. Whatever the cause of its persistence, the snow makes the day look cold despite the sudden mildness of the air. Also, the repeated freezing and thawing it's undergone has left it as crunchy as croutons. Mmm, croutons.
I'm still poking YouTube to see the coloraturas fall out. Here's another aria from Lakmé, sung by Luisa Tetrazzini* this time, being poked with the Sharp Stick as she trills out "Dov'e l'indiana bruna" in a 1911 recording (with remarkably good sound for the time.) I do love the Sharp Stick singing, when it's done well.
* Tetrazzini is also famous for having been honored with an eponymous (and—appropriately—highly caloric) chicken dish and, in San Francisco at least, for her 1910 Christmas Eve concert at Lotta's Fountain on Market Street, an event estimated to have drawn a crowd numbering upward of a quarter million. The estimate is probably extravagant, though it must be acknowledged that San Franciscans have always loved their free events.
