Last Night's Opera

I met Terry at the University of West Florida (UWF) last night to see a one-act opera called Postcards From Morocco, performed by artists-in-residence in connection with Pensacola Opera (http://www.pensacolaopera.com). It was really different from any opera I'd seen. It was fantastic. The voices, the chaos -- people traveling running into each other, intruding on each other, palling up together, avoiding each other. There was a lot of symbolic stuff, too. A puppetmaster who symbolized God or fate. A ship's wheel and sails symbolizing control of one's fate. The stuff they carried symbolized their hopes, dreams, or inner baggage. It was fun to see the woman who played Pinnochio last week (Jennifer Trombley) play a prim milliner whose fantasy self was brazenly seductive. I told her so after the performance. There was also a belly dancer (Sahdia Saraab) who belly danced to ragtime piano! And also did this comic dance balancing a sword on her head. when I learned that the opera was set in Morocco in 1914, two years after France colonized the country, it made sense she'd belly dance to ragtime -- it symbolized the juxtaposition of two cultures. The other performers were Gabriel Preisser, Eric Bowden, Ami Vice, Sheila Murphy, Zechariah Baker, Charles York, and Bolton Ellenberg on piano -- extremely talented people. I loved it.

Today, I'll mostly write Apparently Dead. Tomorrow, I'll connect with members of www.librarything.com who've cataloged the same books I have. I'll contact book cover designers and try to do some comparison shopping among them. Also finish tagging Bloodroom's culture references for updating.