If today's State of the Union did not coincide with it, this report from
the Met by Martin Bernheimer in the Financial Times would have prompted
me to cry out in anguish: "Is this still a free country?" What timely
reassurance by those measured nukular cadences from Washington!

   The audience was meek in response and modest in size, as is often
   the case these days. One aficionado expressed disapproval of the
   central soprano, however,  by booing after two of her three
   arias. He was unceremoniously ejected after the second act, even
   though he pointed out that the heroine had no arias left.  Met
   authorities, who never interfere when patrons disrupt performances
   with ill-timed ovations, claimed that the booer could have stayed
   if he had produced the right ticket stub. The booer, no boor,
   insisted on his way out that he had left the stub in a lounge.
   So much for freedom of expression, not to mention operatic drama,
   in the land of the free and the home of the impetuous.

   http://tinyurl.com/5178

Janos Gereben/SF
www.sfcv.org
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