Madame Butterfly

I met my mom in Jordan Landing last Saturday to see the Met Opera broacast of Madama Butterfly. There is a reason why Puccini is everyone's favorite my friends! I cried through all three acts. The duet at the end of the first act is where the tears began, not only because the music is gorgeous, but the words are beautiful, and then you have the underlying sadness and heartache of having read the synopsis, and knowing that these beautiful words that Pinkerton says are tainted because they are empty.

Pinkerton
Fear not, my dearest, for love does not mean dying,
rather living, And it radiates
happiness celestial.
[drawing close to Butterfly and taking her face in his hands]
I see it shine, as in your eyes, dearest, I'm gazing.

Butterfly
like a fiery eye is flashing. Oh!
Oh! how kindly are the heavens,
Ev'ry star that shines afar!
Is gazing on us,
lighting our future for us...

Butterfly
see the stars!
Ah, lovely night!
Thy perfect calm is breathing love
near and far!

English version by R. H. Elkin.

Beautiful. I've got nothing to say about that, it just makes me want to cry some more. I was very impressed with Cho-Cho San's acting. She was so involved in every emotion. She did an excellent job playing someone that was "half her age." In the way she moved, the way she acted, the way she used the space, you could invision her as a naive fifteen-year old. When she was really distressed, her whole body would shake in a very convincing way. You could tell that her intention was not to make her body shake, but that she was acutally so into character and so into the situation that it just came naturally. Man, I need to take some acting classes again. It's been so long since I've had to really be in character. That's something I want to learn to do well.

The staging was perfect. I liked the simple set, and I loved the use of flowers, particularly of the drappery of rose petals, but also the abundant use of peonies. The costumes were colorful and gorgeous. I loved the use of puppet theater. Although the puppet masters were in black with veils to try and melt away into the stage, I couldn't but help watch them because they were very into chracter as well, even though there were three puppet masters per puppet. They tended to have the emotion that the puppet should have been expressing on their own faces, so they were fun to watch. They made the movements of the puppet very realistic and believable, that the puppet wasn't distracting, but added to the story.

Loved it! Can hardly wait for La Sonambula!

No Line on the Horizon (!)

I know I already blogged about this Album, but it hadn't come out yet. It's out now, and I gotta tell you, I'm not disappointed one bit. I'm really pleased with the album so far actually. It definitely has a different feel than the rest of the albums. Some of the songs have more of a folk feel, but it doesn't lose the good ole U2 I know and love from the 80s either. I like where U2 is headed. I think my favorite song so far is "Magnificent." Maybe I'll have more to say about it later after I've enjoyed countless hours of pleasure listening to it, I probably won't though. I don't like to admit how much I analyze the lyrics of their pieces. I get borderline 10th grade English on it, if you know what I mean (eh, Launa?). Bravo, Bono.

Birthday!

It's my Launa friend's birthday! Happy Birthday Launa friend!!!

Things That Must Stay

Alright! So it's time for another round of things that must stay, long overdue I'd say. Sorry about the rhyming, you have to understand that I don't get much sleep on Wednesday nights. This morning as I was truding up Maizer Hill to take a quiz, I saw a whole bunch of quail, which are definitely birds that must stay. They're so cute and they move around in a silly way that you can't help but smile at.

Fudgesicles must stay. I got one today to try and keep my blood sugar up so I can make it through Language Disorders and the package says, "Notice: This product, when extremely cold, may stick to warm lips or tongue. Allow to warm slightly before eating." I love it when packages say obvious things like that.

Corn Starh, or rather, Carn Storch as it is at my house. One of the handiest things to keep in the kitchen. Made me some Szechwan chicken with it and I was really pleased!

Random

Haha, I hesitate every time I use the word random, because one of my friends would pull statistics on me, and tell me that the way I was using the word wasn't correct, but a) that's ridiculous, and b) there's no other way I know how to describe this event, I even checked the thesaurus. Anyway, this hot air balloon looked like it was about to land on the local cheap and unfortunate "Mexican" fast food eatery that I happen to live immediately next to.

Honey-Spiced Chicken With Orange Sauce

First of all, I think that someone should explain to me this wooden utensil for honey...I'm seein' the stuff as just getting stuck and unpleasant in the grooves of that thing, plus wood is not my fav as far as cleaning goes...particularly when sticky. Maybe I should ask my uncle about that huh?

Anyway, I wanted to give you another taste of my Betty Crocker's New International Cookbook, which is a wonderful resource and pretty much makes me giddy with glee as I open it and immediately find something that I most definitely want to cook. It's even got Danish recipes...and get this...a Danish pickle recipe. Yep, this is definitely the book for me.

So I made this Honey-Spiced Chicken with Orange Sauce, an Israeli dish including honey, lemon, orange,paprika and ginger...some stellar flavors that go excellently together, and combine it with chicken and tons of onions. One of the coolest things about this dish is the gravy. Because I just used chicken breast that I sauteed beforehand, there really wasn't much fat going on with the chicken, so when I made the gravy, it was mostly comprised of juices (like from the fruit and onions), spices, honey. Totally healthful, totally awesome. Cornstarch just might be one of my new best friends.

Key Lime Pie

This is wonderful and the easiest thing in the world to make, minus the fact that key limes are really small, so you have to juice about 20 of them or more to make key lime pie. I really wanted to make a gingersnap crust, because lime and gingersnap sounds amazing to me, and also because any excuse to get a bag of gingersnaps in my kitchen will suffice. I love those, and molasses cookies. Anyway, but a store-bought crust will suffice when you're in a birthday pinch, although the ugly tin container makes it look kind of like a flying saucer.

Recently I had been craving molasses cookies, but didn't have time to make them. That day I got called to go to a fireside literally one minute before it started. I had totally spaced it and was not about to go with my psychological block against being late, but I last second decided to go...and what do you think was among the refreshments? Molasses cookies!! And the fireside was awesome too! So I was doubly glad I went.

My mommy makes the best meatballs in the whole world, which are also really really easy, and involve gingersnaps. You should have that recipe too, but be aware she's one of those cool people that doesn't measure:

1 package of frozen meatballs
pour in a great big can of diced tomatoes
brown a bunch of onions
3/4 cup brown sugar
a bunch of ginger snaps, like half the package or something.

Combine and cook for a long time, til super bubbly and the smell is so wonderful you can hardly stand not to eat it anymore...takes like an hour for frozen meatballs. Maybe. Who knows. Your nose knows.