Where’s a size 3T breastplate when you need one?
Published December 30th, 2006 in Mostly a picture.
Countless benefits accrue from having an opera singer around the house. So many occasions are embellished by the recitation of a few choice operatic lines. For instance, when your kid receives a Viking hat from her Norwegian American cousins, you can cue the opera singer mum to call out a battle cry or two from Wagner’s little dittie Die Valkyrie.
[Wanna hear a vintage recording of the whole damn "Ride of the Valkyries," courtesy The Gutenberg Project? Unfortunately this clip doesn't include the classic "Ho jo to ho!" exclamations from Brünhilde, et al. But it'll get you in the mood.]
We’re already priming the little monkey for a haute culture future. The first night she ever stayed up late and watched her first lengthy stretch of television (late = past 8pm; lengthy stretch = anything over a random moment or two), was spent soaking up a fabulouslsy schmaltzy rendition of holiday classics by soprano Renee Flemming, fronting the teeming mass of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. The lil’ monkey was transfixed, while her mum and her grampy (a voice teacher as well as an actor) spent most of the time debating about Renee’s vocal technique.
I don’t know about Miss Flemming’s vocal technique, but I do know that if she were to have worn a hat like this one during her performance, she might not have been able to resist zig-zagging back and forth across the stage, shaking her head around so’s to jingle up the bells, like the lil’ monkey did all over the house when she first parked this on her head. Might-a worried the choristers and the conductor a bit, but I bet the kids in the audience would have loved it.
2 Responses to “Where’s a size 3T breastplate when you need one?”
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Lesbian Dad is written by a parent who answers to the name "Baba" and works toward a world in which amor does indeed vincit omnia. 
heeheehee! What a cute picture.
I once lived in an apartment below an aspiring opera singer, and I might have enjoyed it more had I been able to play with the costumes or had conversations punctuated with entertaining operatic moments.
Sadly for me, mostly what I got out of it was an absolute loathing of listening to scales and an endless hunt for sounds that would drown them out. The only thing I ever found that worked was Nine Inch Nails, which was also not conducive to the quiet enjoyment of my home.
Oops. Sounds a lot like the kid who shared an apartment wall with us some years back. Only he went for the hippity hoppity. Don’t know what his mom thought of that. The worst was one morning when my beloved had a big audition, and she was warming up, and another guy in an apartment adjacent to us just plain cussed a blue streak at her out his window. Ah, well. Now she just drives her brother and his family crazy, which they enjoy anyhow, being thrill-seekers the lot of ‘em.