A Day at the Opera

“You didn’t write a review of Porgy and Bess,” Rebecca said.   “It got to be too late,” I answered.  “Besides, what I write isn’t a review.  It’s two sentences about what I thought.”  What did I think?  I went out to lunch with my friend Suzanne today, and she asked if I had gone to Porgy and Bess.  “What did you think?” she wanted to know.  “Oh my God!  It was electric!”  “That’s just what I thought,” she said.   “It was so alive!” I babbled on.  “I have never seen an opera that seemed so vibrant and so immediate. I was astonished.”  “That’s just what I thought,” she said.  She told me that when she saw the opera line-up for this year, and she saw Porgy and Bess on it, she thought, “Ho hum.  The songs are nice, but will it add up to an opera?  But then, whammo!  The best opera in years.  The music was amazing”  “That’s just what I thought,” I said.  Two women thinking the same thing.  The songs in Porgy and Bess seem such a part of us, as Americans, a part of who we are, that we take them for granted.  I think of them as entities in themselves, and not part of a larger organism.  I certainly wasn’t expecting to be totally blown away by seeing them in their proper context. Everything about this opera was perfect  - the singing, the acting, the scenery, and most of all the stupendous music.   I wanted it to go on forever.   "That's just what I thought," we both said.