Dead man singing.

I saw an opera today that was being broadcast live from The Metropolitan Opera in NYC into movie theaters around the world. It was this one: Iphigenie en Tauride. I'd never heard of it before. It was a very basic plot, done in French, only one set the entire time. I didn't expect to recognize anything and then Placido Domingo walked out! This was especially surprising because I thought the man was dead. (Turns out, I was not the only opera novice to think this. It's Luciano Pavorotti that's dead; Placido Domingo is going strong, as I can now attest.) Domingo played the main guy (Oreste), who had the other major role opposite Iphigenie (his sister - but of course they didn't know they were siblings, as these opera plots tend to go). It was pretty awesome. Both Placido Domingo and the leading lady had bad colds, but both went on to perform anyway with the apology of any coughing, sneezing, sniffling that might be heard throughout the opera coming from the leading actors. Neither of them sneezed or coughed during the performance. Only at the end, could you actually hear the woman sniffling her runny nose between lyrics. It was really impressive. The set was really cool, I think I'd be even more impressed if I saw an opera than had to change sets at some point. But, this temple of Diana was pretty awesome with an altar and a little dungeon and stuff. Very cool. I want to go back and see more of these. It was also really neat just to see the inside of The Met. Here's what it looked like from my end:

During the intermission, they interviewed a bunch of the actors, as well as followed some of them back to their dressing rooms. Here's Placido Domingo during intermission. You can't tell it here, but he actually had quite the entourage.
I hope to go to another one now that I know what they're like!

So, all in all, it was a pretty cool experience. For the last photo for this blog post: meet Cooper, my friend's really awesome and incredibly social cat. He says 'hi'.