"A Night at the Opera" was a comedy, but there was nothing funny about
the series of dumb errors in my report on the Lotfi Gala last night.
Let me count the ways:

1.  In spite of SFO's attribution of "Ruslan and Lyudmila" in last night's
program *twice* to "Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908)," the opera still
belongs to Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (1804-1857).  I guess it sounds awfully
lame to say that picking that little bit of confusion up at 2 in the
morning is understandable because by the dawn's early light all Russian
composers look the same -- and yet there is no other excuse.

2.  In spite of frequent attendance in grade school during my distant
youth, I managed to refer to the 1985 SF "Ring" as happening 20 years ago.

3.  In spite of several gentle and restrained reminders to these and
other typos, glitches and early-morning brain-spasms, I believe there may
be other horrors lurking in that premature draft -- even after correction
of "First" to "Frist," substituting "The Day I Met Caruso" for "The Great
Caruso," etc.  The gala was disappointing only in its lack of energy, but
my report was ghastly in its vain attempt to get simple things right.
Sigh, groan, and apologies.

A kind colleague wrote to console me in my "darkest hour," and I asked
him what "funny" errors he might have made in writing about music (if at
all).  Assuming, perhaps foolishly, that MCML members had some musical
synapse-twitchings of their own, it might be amusing to hear some!  I
would certainly be amused at this point.

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