Wednesday, September 12, 2012

La Traviata




When the waiter casually asked us how we were today, he wasn’t at all prepared when I announced “Actually we’re all emotionally drained from the opera we just left.”

The table exploded into one big laugh, no one more than me.  Save the waiter, who took about 30 seconds to recover.  Clearly he’d not gotten this response before.  But he got back at me, repeatedly teasing me for the rest of our lunch.  Not a problem.  I love to laugh.

It occurred to me later that probably no one needed that laugh as much as me.  I am definitely what you call “the sensitive one”.  I feel things deeply and was truly spent after that amazing opera.  Verdi’s Traviata is such a wrenching mess of a love story.  Like opera always is.  And like life can be, though gratefully not so dramatically.

Comedians are generally very sensitive people.  They are the ones who feel things the deepest, need the cathartic release the most, and so make the laughter happen.

I definitely needed to laugh after that amazingly powerful Traviata.*

*Simulcast from the Metropolitan Opera.

Photo:  Stock.xchnge

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