Immigration Law & Opera - a little about me

My friend S has been telling me I should blog opera for some time now.  S is the reason I am an opera addict - we met in junior high school in Calgary, Alberta, and started doing the yearly talent show - I play piano and S is a coloratura soprano (well actually an architect, but that's a long story).  She took me to my first opera when I was 17, Die Fledermaus.

I moved to Toronto for college, where they had great student deals and I saw most of the operas they put on between 2001 and 2005.  Some were great, some were fantastic, some were okay.  Die Walkure was pretty awesome, Oedopus Rex was pretty disgusting, Rigoletto had a very funny moment I'll blog about another time (made funnier by the horrific cold I had and the bottle of cough syrup I drank so as not to cough like those old people I hate that sit in Family Circle).  And, as luck always turns out, when Toronto finally finished building its fancy new opera house, I moved to New York.  I went back last year for an Aida, and thought the lobby looked a lot better than the inside, but whatever, cool opera house and way nicer than the Hummingbird Center from before.

My first Met performance was a trip with S to New York in college.  A family friend bought us specatular seats to Julius Caesar with Ruth Ann Swenson and David Daniels.  Great stuff.  We also saw the Broadway La Boheme this trip, which I loved.  I did the rush thing all day and got us front row tickets.  Rodolfo was crazy hot, and he got so into it that he couldn't stop the tears in the last scene and ended up crying the entire way through the curtain calls.  Marcello was also crazy hot, had good chemistry with Musetta.  My favorite moment in Boheme is in Act II during Musetta's aria where Marcello suddenly gives up pretending not to like her and has a sudden outburst - he did this perfectly.  Don't ask me anything else about the singing, that was before my opera obsession and inner critic had really been turned on, and it was miked, and whatever with the opera vs. broadway fighting, it was still pretty cool. 

My weirdest opera experience was again with S and the family friend, this time in Paris seeing some new opera about a mother and son and a war and some blood, dunno.  Sometimes I email her about operas and she's always telling me I should blog.  One day I'll pull some emails and post them. 

Then in 2005 I moved to New York for law school, and have become an opera addict.

I've been going to the Met since I moved to New York in 2005, and going like crazy to almost everything at the Met since 2008.  I used to do some city opera, we usually do Caramoor, and sometimes I see operas on vacations in fun places (or find excuses to go places but do so actually to see an opera, eg Toronto Aida), but mostly I do the Met.  Family Circle usually, balcony boxes preferred, amazing orchestra/grand tier when I win the weekend draws, and (hopefully) some great student tickets this year with my very useful intern, who is under 30 and a full-time student. 

For a living, I work as an immigration lawyer.  Immigration law just kind of happened to me, the professor who teaches it came to me the first week of law school and said "you aren't a U.S. citizen, you should take my class."  And I loved it.  Everything about it.  Confusing laws, constitutional issues, court, crazy clients, and lots of satisfaction helping people stay here with their families.  After a rocky start at the beginning of the recession, I finally landed my first-time-ever full-time permanent job, working in a small office for an immigration attorney practicing more than 30 years, BB.  My secretary, MF, and I have grand plans to write a book about the crazy that goes down at work, and maybe that will overlap into this blog - we will see.

Also, conveniently, working as an immigration lawyer, at least for BB, means work ends pretty promptly at 6pm every night.  Which, in prior years, meant running to the subway, going home (Hell's kitchen, conveniently 10 minutes walk to the Met), having a (some) glass(es) of wine, scarfing down dinner, and then walking over for 8pm.  This year, with 7:30 performances and BB trying harder to keep me late at work, we'll see how that eating-at-home things goes.

My partner J, who I met in law school, sometimes goes to the opera with me.  He's not in love with it, but I did my best to hook him.  His first opera was a Hei-Kyung Hong Boheme, and the "snow scene" kept him talking for days.  We've found a good balance of joint performances for him - about 7 this year - and the rest I usually go alone or find fresh victims.  He really hates Handle.  We mostly see Italian stuff, since he's got Sicilian blood I guess that means it has more impact on him.  So far I have something like 40 tickets for this upcoming year, but I usually break down and buy more (so many Aidas, and I think I only have 1 ticket?!).  Plus the weekend drawings are good, I even won this Saturday for Nabucco but I can't go and gave the tickets to a friend. 

J is much more into musicals, so we do a few of those a year. I had a musical phase in junior high - les miserables and phantom, but I think that was just a phase that led from musicals-pretending-to-be-opera to real opera.  There is something way more thrilling about unamplified singing than musicals, but musicals can be a lot of fun.  J has no formal musical training, but he sings.  It took a while to get him to sing the right notes, and then in tune, and then in his own voice instead of a crap artificial voice, but I play piano and he sings.  Judy, Liza, all the usual gay stuff.  Lotsa fun.  He's starting to get really good - maybe he'll take my hints and sign up for actual singing lessons so we can see his full potential. Our newest book of songs, all Elvis, has some good ones for him. "It's now or never" is a good one, and he tears it up with a G at the end that is in a very good place in his voice right now.  BTW, he's tenorish.  When he sings in cheesy opera tenor voice instead of the usual boyband voice, I can almost believe it.  Maybe with lessons.

And, by the way, I have no formal opera/singing training.  I know some of the lingo from S and generally from opera reviews and blogs.  I certainly can't sing, although I never really tried and maybe if I saw a voice teacher I could at least figure out my voice type.  I think baritone probably, and not very good.  I can sing extremely loudly and have huge lungs, so maybe I just need lessons?  But who wants to be a baritone, anyway?  S says that I have a good ear though, because when she sends me recordings of her at vocal competitions I can usually come up with good comments and suggestions even though I'm not using the technical terms.

One thing I must say, though, is either other bloggers and reviewers have way better ears than me or are just really mean and bitchy, because there are so many singers/performances that other people say are off pitch and I didn't notice/can't tell.  Like Sondra Radvanovsky.  Everyone says she's flat all the time.  Am I deaf or something?  She sounds fine to me most of the time.  Meanwhile, Trebs and Mattila are sharp all the time on high notes and nobody seems to notice.  Whatever.  I can't quite explain the intricate formula of how I decide whether I like someone, but let's just say that volume probably factors in a lot more than pitch.  And I can't tell you why, but I am so in love with chest voice.  Dolora Zajick does it best.  She did La Luce Langue on the Met stage at one of the council auditions a few years ago and I thought I was going to pee my pants it was so good. 

Enough about me though, on to actual blogging of stuff.  If you enjoy reading, or if you want to talk immigration law, shoot an email or make comments.  And, if by chance you actually know me, I'm not trying very hard to hide my (or others') identity(/ies) or anything like that, but I'm calling most people by one or two letters instead of their full name - please do the same if you comment.