Thursday, May 12, 2011

Quotables

For my part, I confess I seldom listen to the players: one has so much to do, in looking about and finding out one's acquaintance, that, really, one has no time to mind the stage. One merely comes to meet one's friends, and show that one's alive.
-Fanny Burney on attending plays

4 comments:

  1. Why be at an opera or a play if you're not going to watch it? It would be worse because once she found her friends afterwards, she wouldn't be able to gossip about what she was watching....because she wasn't watching it!

    (I, on the other hand, would be completely enamored with the play/opera/whatever. I'm not the person who's in the mood for gossiping before, during or after something. I like to absorb everything. I'm the artsy one; I like looking at the costumes, the props, the stage....don't go to me for conversation!)

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  2. where is the opera channel when you need a nice bit of Italian Opera? Ria

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  3. @Well when the real drama takes place in the audience who could pay attention! :)

    But I am with you guys...it's difficult to make it to the opera nowadays

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  4. @Heather--Oh, I know there were the place to see and be seen, but if I were to go to one (not that I'd ever go to an opera. Opera irritates my very sensitive ears. Give me ballet!), I'd be absorbed watching it.

    It's hard to see even a ballet or a Broadway these days. It's a combinations of price, date and the area with me. Most of them take place in Chicago...and I live an hour from Chicago on a GOOD traffic day. Downtown Chicago is, I think, 45 minutes by Metra and that's nowhere near the theatres! It's like, "Okay, can they come a wee closer? We have a great theater that does Broadways in Waukegan? Why not WAUKEGAN!? That's much better. And about that date. How about a Thursday during the summer when I'm not in school. Not a Thursday in March or April when I'm cooped up in school, buy a Thursday in late May would be okay." One can hope.

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