Saturday at Home with Madame Butterfly

Saturdays around here can get pretty hectic sometimes. Today it's snow, rain and sleet outside so we're mostly staying home. I got dinner in the oven then had an hour to wait. Tom was in town running errands, so I indulged myself. I grabbed a cup of coffee (plenty of creamer and a sugar cube added), my knitting, and selected the genre "Opera" in Media Player.

Ahhhhhh....

I suspect Tom may not be all that enamored with opera so it's a special treat I have for myself when he is absent.

I think back to what first drew me to the sounds of opera and I recall some specific times when songs embedded themselves into my soul.

First there was Carmen and Gilligan's Island.
In one episode the characters put on a performance and as near as I can recall, The Professor had Shakespeare's "Hamlet" on his three-hour cruise and Thurston Howell the Third had a record of "Carmen"
They put the two together in their play. I still can't separate the two in my head to this day. Whenever I hear the words "Neither a borrower nor a lender be..." I hear the tune "Votre Toast, je peux vous le rendre" from "Carmen". When I hear "Votre Toast, je peux vous le rendre" my brain overlays Shakespeare's line. There's  more there, but this is what drifts to the forefront. I loved it when I heard it as a child. I bet I'm not the only one who had the same experience.

Then there was "Madame Butterfly" with Shirley MacLaine in "My Geisha". I saw it on TV when I was in my very early teens. Shirley performed in "Madame Butterfly" as part of the plot. It captured me then. I can't hear Madame Butterfly without seeing Shirley's face crying and with her hand reaching out to her husband. I don't remember much about the  movie, but I loved that opera from then on.

And then, as an adult, I learned that many of the tunes accompanying my favorite cartoons were in fact, opera excerpts. I had no idea!