Are you grading exams and reading Supreme Court opinions? No? Then you'll have time to watch Lego TOSCA!

Check it out: a 1919 NY Times review of L'AMORE DEI TRE RE. Can't agree with his dissing of FRANCESCA, but on everything else -- good piece.

I didn't know until this past weekend's Commencement ceremony (or Common Cement, as the electric traffic sign always manages to put it) that at the Ed School that's part of my university we had an MA student named Amneris Lopez Boyd!

Well boil my borscht. Pimen's narrative of the murder of Dimitri is in the 1869 version of BORIS but not the 1872 version. Guess Mussorgsky deleted it to "make room" for the Polish Act, but the later performance tradition -- correctly -- deemed it essential (as is the Polish Act) and put it back.

One of many things you learn from listening to Gergiev's side-by-side recording of the 1869 and 1872 versions.

SATYAGRAHA

Converted? I don't know if I'd say that. But I'll say this.

I rarely turn off classical radio just because I can't stand what I'm hearing. In fact, I never do so -- except once. It was years ago, and the piece under transmission was, of course, SATYAGRAHA; specifically, the beginning of Act II (the "ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha"s).

Listening to it yesterday, I found the opening of Act I very beautiful. Not operatic, really; more like a cantata. But beautiful. More demanding as the act went on; but hey, I like Strauss and Berg: I can do "demanding."

When Act II and the "ha ha ha"s came around, I found they sounded very different from how I remembered them when I Scarpia'ed them off my radio all those years ago. From back then, I remember it as a very industrial sound. Yesterday, it was lyrical and tonal. Fault of memory? Difference of interpretation? (A very bad car radio?)

Anyway, yesterday's broadcast was a pleasant surprise.

OK, I'm enjoying THE GAMBLER right now; I didn't blog the broadcasts of BOHEME b/c I didn't feel like listening to it (that's a see opera for me, you know?), nor that of PETER GRIMES b/c I don't yet know it well enough and I had a lot work for my day job.

Anyway, I did go down to the multiplex and March 23 to see TRISTAN. That was only partly that I love TRISTAN, tho' I certainly do. It was also because of the amazing run of incidents that plagued this year's TRISTAN run at the Met: if anyone else upchucked or broke their butt, and I had a chance to see it live, well, I'd feel pretty foolish if I let a sawbuck and a drive to the mall had stand between me and seeing that.

As it happened, the broadcast performance was incident-free, and a fine performance. Full comments to follow.

Why I didn't blog LUCIA: I was away. Not just on the road, but in the Matrix.

Now, were you at the opening TRISTAN? If so, feel free to comment, but from my vantage point (not having been there or heard it), I'm going to side with the apparent majority who think the booing of John MacMaster was bang out of line.

The dissenters say he was so goshawful that artistic justice demanded booing, just like they do at La Scala and Palermo. The majority says he wasn't that goshawful: he was singing his first Tristan at the Met, on short notice, with no rehearsal.

I would add that for better or worse -- mostly for better -- the Met is not La Scala or Palermo, and anyway, Wagner is not Italian opera, with its "school" conventions that can be easily applied by an audience full of gifted-amateur critics.

Mr. MacMaster, take heart. You saved the show, and most Met-goers are grateful to you for it.