'Madama Butterfly' from the Metropolitan Opera

I recently watched this video from the Metopolitan Opera website. You can rent it there to watch on your pc or you can pick up a copy from Amazon.com or if you are real lucky, you local library will have a copy of this performance. I watch and listen to a lot of opera so I can tell you that 'Madama Butterfly' is a difficult opera to execute well because the soprano needs to have a hardy voice, but she also needs to appear to be a waify, 15-year old girl - a very hard thing to pull off. American soprano, Patricia Racette, does the job beautifully with a little help from the costume department. Racette sounds great and doesn't tire out down to the last note of this difficult role. The other singers round out the cast well, and the production, created by Anthony Minghella, includes some wonderful unorthodox puppets. The main puppet used represents Cio Cio San's (That's Butterfly's given name) little boy, whereas generally they just use a real boy. But this puppet is adorable as his masters make him walk around and look at up at her with such a display of trusting emotions. It's quite fantastic. I've seen a few different productions of 'Butterfly' on screen, but none ever worked as well as this one in my opinion. It's just a wonderful show and a great way for anyone to enjoy a Puccini Opera cheaply in the comfort of their own home. If you have never watched an Italian opera before, don't worry, English subtitles are now always provided so you don't have to do any homework, or any thing like that. Just open a bottle of wine and enjoy the show.

First mowing of the year.

February 5 it is, and I already felt compelled to do some lawn-mowing. It was terribly thick in some areas, and if you put it off, you are just heightening the difficulty later. It hasn't rained for quite a few days, so I though had better get at it. I decided to leave the front yard alone as it wasn't bad yet. Also, violets have taken over the place and I want to leave them alone and not discourage them. I have no idea where they came from, but they are so pretty. There is also some beautiful light green clover in the front yard that later blooms with some adorable pink flowers and I didn't want to ruin that either. Then, all around our big cedar tree, and in various small patches in the yard, there is this little bulb flower that makes tall dark green grass and blooms in the spring with pretty little purple flowers. They are cute but the plant seems a bit invasive. I've been in a dilemma how to treat them. I mowed down the backyard ones, but I think if it rains soon, I will selectively pull the front yard ones up by the root and see if you can control them and enjoy their beauty without getting irritated with them. They smell like onions and when you mow over them, they clog up the mower much worse than the thick grass does. Anyway, I like to try to use what I call "selective mowing" to encourage pretty little flowers in the yard. I wish we had some of those tiny white daisies you see in some lawns. It would be great to have an entire lawn or large patch that was mostly small, pretty flowers.