Random stuff, travels, appearances in 2013

A few years ago, I went to Sarasota to see their performance of Verdi's Giovanna d'Arco, my absolute favorite neglected opera, and I found myself thinking, as I listened to a live performance of music I'd heard on record innumerable times over 35 years... "this is the first time I've heard this done live, and probably the last."

And then, this year, I see two productions of Giovanna d'Arco. So the lesson is, you never know.

Oddball local things include:
• Drove over all 8 Bay Area toll bridges in 1 day (on January 1 no less)
• the Alameda Antique Fair
• 
  Driving through the new fourth bore of the Caldecott Tunnels for the first time, and what a beauty it is
• 
  played (and completed) a video game for the first time in ages - Zelda: a Link between Worlds. What an achievement.

Cities I went to: San Diego, Tucson, Chicago, Ashland, Oregon, New York City, Washington DC, London, Bath, Leicester, Paris, Marseille, Geneva (yuck), Venice, Vienna, Prague, Leipzig, Weimar, Meiningen, Nuremberg, Munich, Frankfurt, Bielefeld, Hamburg, Cologne

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In addition to seeing lots of theater (see previous post), I was in four theatrical productions myself:
• Early Spring, a staged reading of a work in progress -- I was a hard-boiled junk dealer with a thick but unplaceable accent.
• For Fringe of Marin in the late Spring, an abusive husband with a heart condition.
• November back at Fringe of Marin, a drunken beat poet, which I loved; and
• favorite of all these, in August I got to be Escartefigue, the dim-witted but good-hearted Marseille ferryboat captain in a production of Pagnol's Marius, which is why I added Marseille to my Europe itinerary. And it's the first of a trilogy! Job security!

That's it for Year in Review. Now, on to the present. Next time, why I hated Dallas Buyer's Club.