What's opera, doc?

Spending an afternoon at the opera today made me realize that I'm really not doing too badly for a savage raised by wolves.

My people are not opera people. Well, my daughter is an opera person and she's working really hard to help me appreciate good music, but I grew up in a household that tended more toward Johnny Cash than Placido Domingo. I still recall the time a high-school classmate corrected my pronunciation of "Placido Domingo." How was I supposed to know it's not supposed to rhyme with "placebo"?

I've seen some Gilbert and Sullivan but never a real opera all the way through, so when some colleagues formed a carpool to travel an hour north and watch a performance of the Metropolitan Opera's Rigoletto simulcast live in tiny, provincial Zanesville, Ohio, I decided to give it a try. My daughter met me at the theater where we settled into our comfy seats for a high-def, high-class, high-culture experience.

It was pretty good, I think. I'm not really qualified to judge, but if good opera involves colorful costumes, dramatic sets, remarkable voices, and compelling music, then this was good. I would have been lost without the subtitles and I'm annoyed that the Duke got away scot-free at the end, but the time whizzed by quickly and I kept wanting to clap. (But what's the point? The performers are in New York. They can't tell whether we're clapping, stomping, or throwing popcorn at the screen.)

At the end I appreciated one unheralded advantage of having been raised by wolves far from the realm of opera: no one will ever ask me to sing a demanding song in Italian in front of a live audience while lying on my back in the trunk of a car. So there's that. If there's an opera award for Best Performance by a Soon-to-be-Corpse Stuffed in the Trunk of a Classic Car, Diana Damrau ought to get it. 

Just don't ask me to pronounce her name.