The Met by night.

Time flies. I’m not sure if it says anything about the cities themselves — or the use I made of them — that eight weeks in London seemed blissfully long, whereas eight weeks in New York flew by almost before I knew it. Or maybe I’m just getting into the swing of this vagabond lifestyle. In any case, here I am in Florida now, for two weeks of relaxation, regrouping and repacking, before we head off yet again, this time for a Parsifal in Zürich and a Wozzeck in Santa Fe.

New York turned out to be wonderful. I say “turned out” because unlike London, it wasn’t a city I warmed to immediately. It grew on me, however, and it’s safe to say that the Met played a large part in that. I liked having one of the world’s great opera houses almost literally around the corner from me, I liked actually knowing first hand what all the gossips on Parterre were being snippy (or otherwise) about, and I liked how remarkably quickly I became accustomed to seeing opera’s biggest names on stage.

And I did manage to see quite a few of them. Natalie Dessay, Diana Damrau, Juan Diego Florez, Bryn Terfel, Karita Mattila, Peter Mattei, Joseph Calleja, Renée Fleming, Joyce DiDonato and the list (do you hate me yet?) goes on. Somehow I think I expected that to be a slightly surreal experience — that my brain might struggle to process the star overload — but in fact it was a habit I fell into almost immediately. After all, when they’re on stage and I’m in the audience, that’s pretty much home territory for both of us, even if the city we’re in isn’t. What was occasionally surreal was that because I had one of these…

… I actually managed to meet quite a few of the people I saw on stage. Think what you will of me, but I can’t deny I enjoyed the smug little thrill of heading right through the stage door instead of waiting around outside it. Not to mention the fairly huge thrill of meeting Joyce DiDonato — whom I fangirlishly adore — in her dressing room, while she was being made up for her performance in Ariadne auf Naxos. Truth be told, I’ve only ever done the stage door thing for a couple of people — it’s not often my style — but it’s always pretty cool meeting performers you admire, and all the more so when the Tenor In One’s Life turns out already to know them. Or when you show up for a party and the lady hanging her coat up ahead of you turns around, shakes your hand, and says “Hi, I’m Marilyn.” And you say “Yes, we know you are…” because it’s MARILYN HORNE. Oh yes.

The fangirl stuff is (joyously) incidental though. The chief operatic pleasure of New York was, of course, the opera itself. In eight weeks, I managed to see Lucia di Lammermoor, The Queen of Spades, Le comte Ory, Wozzeck, Ariadne auf Naxos and Capriccio at the Met, Bluebeard’s Castle at the New York Philharmonic, recitals by Matthew Polenzani, Sarah Connolly and Daniel Okulitch and a Handel concert by Dorothea Röschmann and David Daniels. Which, especially for a girl from Dunedin (or even Sydney) is fairly amazing.

Even more amazing, in a sense, is what I didn’t see. It’s extraordinary how quickly one begins, in the face of such a banquet, to pick and choose. It’s true I missed the new Walküre just because it was so completely sold out — though I did watch it from the screens in the Met green room a couple of times — but in other cases, it was a sheer case of choosing a night at home, or dinner out, instead of yet more opera. So Tosca, Il trovatore, Orfeo ed Euridice and Rigoletto all fell by the wayside, as did everything at the New York City Opera — a shame, as I did kind of intend to see Australia’s Own Brad Cohen conduct L’elisir d’amore there — and a lot of smaller scale semi-amateur or student productions, all of which made it to my Calendar of Possibility but, alas, no further. Apparently I have my limits, even in New York; perhaps I should hand in my fanatic’s card.

Then again, it’s more than I managed to see in London. I think I was a better tourist in London, but a better opera devotee (and, I must admit, better devourer of burgers) in New York. I still don’t know how the resident faithful manage to live balanced lives there, or how they manage not to starve. Maybe they don’t. There’s so much on, all of the time; so much that it’s physically impossible to see everything, and that even to maintain, say, a five-performances-per-week schedule, would still require some hard decisions — and some mad dashes across town, for those occasions when the supremacy of Lincoln Center is challenged.

And now it’s all over. Regrets? I have a few. I was too slow off the mark to snag tickets for the Chicago Symphony’s concert performance of Otello, conducted by Muti. Sloth kept us from a Marilyn Horne masterclass, which I expect would have been a pretty enlightening evening; and the only reason I skipped Rigoletto was that I couldn’t make it to either of the performances featuring Diana Damrau, whose Gilda I would love to hear after she stole the show so adorably in Le comte Ory. She’s following me to Zürich, though, for a Liederabend, so at least I’ll have another fix.

As for highlights, I’d put Bluebeard’s Castle right near the top of the list. Esa-Pekka Salonen, Gabor Bretz, the sublime Michelle DeYoung and the New York Phil in top form — plus a seriously cool opera — made for one of the most memorable musical experiences of my life so far. What could top that? Well, seeing my tenor making his Met début comes to mind. Very very proud moment. Hearing Joyce DiDonato not once but four times, in two different roles, was also pretty special; and continuing the Fabulous Mezzo theme, Sarah Connolly’s recital at Alice Tully was sensational.

And then there were the diners, the delis, the squirrels in Central Park, Academy Records, Fifth Avenue, the panoply of skyscrapers old and new, the horse-drawn carriages, the Hershey shop, and so on and so on. It took me a week or two, but I warmed to New York, even without much sunshine to show it off. I don’t think I could live there forever. But I’ll be pleased to return, and I’m already looking forward to our next visit.

Your blogger and the Tenor in Her Life, on the occasion of a certain début.