Scale

New York is full of big things: The Empire State Building. The Brooklyn Bridge. Junior's cheesecake.
After last night, however, one thing leaps to mind and dwarfs everything else, and that's the ambition of the people who designed the auditorium of the Metropolitan Opera.
I envisage a man with a moustache with his thumb pressed hard against his pencil, as he squints past it at the plans...

"So from the stage to the top tier, let's call it the Family Circle for now, Carmichael, what's our distance?"
"Little over two miles, sir."
"Hmm.Just thinking..."
"Yes sir?"
"Will it be big enough?"
"Sir?"
"Yes, yes, I know it'll be fine for run-of-the-mill operas, your Verdis, Puccinis and all the rest, but as architects we have to allow the creative spirit room to grow, Carmichael. To thrive."
"Yes sir."
"Do you know, Carmichael...little Alex was watching the darndest thing on the television the other evening."
"Really sir?"
"Yes. Sort of adventure programme. Aeroplanes. You know the thing?"
"Yes sir. It's 1983, sir."
"Yes, yes. Just checking. Well I was thinking of old Ernie Garrison. Know the name?"
"No sir."
"Ernest Garrison was the first to bring in a real elephant for Cleopatra. Caused riots in Paris. Went on to fill some minor Opera House in Germany with water for some Wagnerian affair...with real boats. Three chorus girls drowned. Visionary chap."
"Riiiight, sir."
"So modern opera's all this stuff that happened a hundred years ago, am I right? And there are new books and stories being written and turned into operas all the time."
"Yes sir."
"So I was thinking, Carmichael...that aerial daggadaggadagga boom stuff young Alex was watching is just the sort of thing we ought to be allowing for. Passage of time, increasing demands of the audience and all that."
"Erm, yes, sir."
"Nip off to the library, there's a good lad, and find out how much room we'll need for a decent dogfight."

Yes the architect is English. My imagination, my rules.

Anyway. Last night Krissa and I found ourselves waiting for the curtain-up of La Boheme, trembling with trepidation and excitement, peering at the stage around a velvet-covered handrail and dressing the wounds of nearby elderly folk who had been trampled by a red-dressed teenage airhead, approximately....here:

The roof was made of scallops of gold, the seats were red velvet and the opera binoculars with an otherwise respectable 8000X magnification strength (fine for spying on neighbouring planets or ascertaining the bonding structure of long hydrocarbon molecules) were sadly inadequate for the task of providing us with the fine details of the opera, like who the characters were and other trifling things like that.

With the perspective already under calculated assault from the set-maker's corner, things on stage looked a little other-worldly. The rooftops of Paris and the cafes of the Latin Quarter changed places with a breathtaking winter scene outside an inn on the outskirts of the city, all built and presented in the three dimensions of the Operatic universe - Height, Width, and Up And To The Side A Bit But Not Quite Depth.
The orchestra, who should, by rights, have been abiding by the same set of universal laws as the audience, also looked a little skewed. When we first sat down one woman in the pit looked like she was playing a bright yellow wooden spoon of the sort you use to stir cooking pasta. It was a harp.

Opera music is something of an acquired taste. Grand, a treat for the senses, stimulating and in some cases moving, but at the same time, an acquired taste. Our distance from the stage may also have had its part in removing some of the raw power from the singing, and gave way to a thought I never expected to have.
"Oh, I suppose that was a climax. Well done."

But over all I thought it was all absolutely fantastic. People-watching in the intermission from the balconies and bars, looking out at the fountain in the middle of the Lincoln Center...as an evening it was marvellous; a really wonderful experience, and the bit where the downed airman saluted the Red Baron as he did loop-the-loops around the chandelier brought tears to my eyes.