Attending a Met matinee from afar.

The world’s greatest opera company.

Less than satisfied with his playing of the organ at mass this morning, Bickerstaff decided the best way to nurse his wounds was to relax the rest of this cold and rainy day (a rarity in Taos)–practicing could wait til tomorrow. So determined, he lit the fire, brewed a pot of coffee, called the dog over, and opened the Met Opera app, eventually settling on the work seen above.

Although Puccini is one the writer’s two favorite opera composers (the other being Wagner), he had somehow never seen or heard The Girl of the Golden West (as it is titled in English), probably because of being advised by, via reading and hearing, “experts” and critics over the years it was the mature Puccini’s least successful opera. Well, they are entitled to their opinions and your Tatler is entitled to his, which is La fanciulla del West is a stupendous, albeit strange and unconventional, achievement of Puccini’s and is now high up on his list of favorite operas.

Enjoying the opera, however, this writer felt a strange wave of nostalgia wafting over him and realized that though he has no warm feelings remaining for the City of New York itself, the feelings are still much intact for the cultural institutions there, such as the New York Philharmonic, the NYPL, the Museum, and of course the Met, for which the warm feelings are the strongest. That nostalgia is remedied a bit by the aforementioned Met Opera app, with its deep library of performances, from historic radio broadcasts to the more recent performances in superb high-resolution sound and audio, a treat for the eyes and ears if you have reasonably decent AV gear. Other terrific features include being able to “re-attend,” performances attended in the past, as well the backstage interviews, with the interviewers being Met stars themselves.

Still and all, though, there is no substituting sitting in the audience and experiencing the charged atmosphere and expectation as the Austrian crystal lamps (a gift to the Met from the Austrian government as gratitude to the United States for rebuilding the bombed Vienna State Opera House after the Second World War) slowly rise to the ceiling and then, curtain up. Nothing will ever duplicate that.