Over at Musical Perceptions, Scott has something that seems like a “meme”: go to the Metropolitan Opera archives and see what they were playing on the day you were born (keyword search with your birth date written out).
For me, the answer was “Concert Cavalleria Rusticana {471}.”
You know, this would probably be more fun if I knew something about opera…
(It appears to be a concert performance of a handful of pieces from other opera, held in the Botanical Garden. None of the names mean anything at all to me, though.)
I didn’t quite get the Ring series, but when I was born, they were performing Il Barbiere di Siviglia, which gets the Bugs Bunny stamp of approval:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_of_Seville
La Boheme. Not bad. Prefer Cavaleria Rusticana, though.
Verdi’s Requiem, in memory of JFK. Ouch.
cond. Solti
La Forza Del Destino, by Verdi. I guess it would be too much to expect a cheery opera.
Faust. Anything with the Devil in it can’t be bad.
Nothing. A couple days before they did Madama Butterfly. It looks like their season ends June 26th, two days before my birthday. A couple weeks before we moved into the house I grew up in (my 1st birthday), they were down the road at Wolf Trap.
Don Giovanni, and the next day, Die Zauberflote.
A pleasant factoid for this Mozart fan!
Hey Constance Reader – I got Don Giovanni as well!
Chad, YouTube can help you out.
Like Scott, they appear to have not been performing for several months around my birth.
Rigoletto. First performed in 1883, they’ve now done it 815 times!
The year I was born, the Met was doing a touring performance of Werther. The day I was born, they were performing in Detroit MI, the city I was born in.
(1) Did anyone else enjoy the NPR [or was it BBC? my pain pills cloud my mind] broadcast clip of Tenor Luciano Pavarotti [12 Oct 1935 – 6 Sept 2007] singing a duet of “It’s a Man’s World” with James Brown [3 May 1933 – 25 Dec 2006], the undeniable Godfather of Soul? It was one of those combinations, such as shrimp and fudge brownie, that taste much much better than they sound. Or, as Opera skeptics say: “Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.”
(2) I just posted a Santa Fe Opera / Madama Butterfly politically incorrect anecdote at the “Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It’s Off to Santa Fe I Go” thread of your sibling scienceblog “The Quantum Pontiff.”
cavalleria rusticana! look it up on youtube and listen to ‘intermezzo’. it’s sublime.
i got tristan and isolde. if only wagner wasn’t so…wagnerian. dear me.
Only slightly late to the party here – Lohengrin. Wagner ftw? >.<
Mine was Arabella, with Kiri Te Kanawa performing on the main role: http://tinyurl.com/2ssbqo