Beethoven: To My Distant Beloved

MUSIC
WEDNESDAY – FRIDAY & SUNDAY, JULY 1 – 3 & 5, 2020 (continuing through AUGUST 9)
10:00, 10:30 & 11:00 AM & 1:00, 1:30 & 2:00 PM WEDNESDAY
1:00, 1:30, 2:00, 7:00, 7:30 & 8:00 PM THURSDAY
10:00, 10:30 & 11:00 AM & 7:00, 7:30, 8:00 & 8:30 PM FRIDAY
10:00, 10:30 & 11:00 AM & 1:00, 1:30, 2:00 & 2:30 PM SUNDAY

On-Site Opera
Via Telephone

$40
https://osopera.org/productions/distantlove/

I didn't List this initially, because Beethoven isn't just mainstream, but the definition of mainstream:  the progenitor of the Masterpiece Complex that has stultified classical music since the dark days of the early-mid 19th Century.  To be sure, he's also unbelievably great — and this piece is, for what it's worth, the first song cycle in the Western classical tradition.  But really this event gets listed for its innovative form:  a singer — you get to chose between soprano and baritone — will phone you (that's right:  you have to remember how to answer a telephone call) and sing the cycle to you over the phone (after having sent you longing emails in the week before the performance).  Now some of us view that kind of one-on-one interaction with performers with horror (especially when, as is the case with the splendid soprano Jennifer Zetlan, her husband will be sitting in the room with her accompanying her love songs to you on the piano!).  Some of us also wonder whether it's really worth paying $40 to listen to music over the phone — perhaps the worst vehicle for sound transmission in current mass use — when we can listen to, say, Christian Gerhaher brilliantly reproduced on our stereos (yeah yeah, I know:  having a stereo is even more paleolithic than answering a phone call).   But On Site Opera has to get points for coming up with a really clever response to the obstacles facing live music-making under The Quarantine.  And the basic thesis of this List is of course that live performance is an unmatchable experience.  So it's your call.  IF you can get a ticket, that is:   they're scarce (I mean, every performance has an audience of one).  There are still a few available for the end of the run.

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT:  Absinthe Drip:  pour 5 oz. of water into an Absinthe Fountain.  Pour 1 oz. Absinthe into an Absinthe Glass.  Place an Absinthe Spoon holding a sugar cube across the top of the Absinthe Glass under a spigot of the Absinthe Fountain.  Drip water from the Absinthe Fountain through the Absinthe Spoon into the Absinthe Glass.  The sugar cube should dissolve and the Absinthe take on a louche (i.e., turn milky).  Stir briefly before drinking (happily, you don't need a special Absinthe Stirrer).  (PS:  you can get perfectly acceptable results by simply pouring ice water slowly into any old glass holding Absinthe with a sugar cube you've muddled at the bottom.)