Metropolitan Opera's live broadcast of Gioachino Rossini's
Il Barbiere di Siviglia at Bella Botega Cinemas in Redmond

MET AT THE MOVIES: Saturday, March 24 1:30pm - Bartlett Sher (The Light in the Piazza) makes his Met debut directing this new production of Rossini’s subversive comedy. Heading the cast are the world’s leading Rossini tenor Juan Diego Flórez, sensational mezzo soprano Joyce DiDonato, and magnetic baritone Peter Mattei. Maurizio Benini conducts.

As my early birthday present, today we enjoyed a live broadcast of Metropolitan Opera's new production of Rossini's hilarious comedic opera The Barber of Seville (Il Barbiere di Siviglia), directed by an acclaimed theater director Bartlett Sher (of Seattle's INTIMAN Theatre) and his Tony Award-winning team from The Light in the Piazza.

As Galvin Borchert writes in the Seattle Weekly, New York City's Metropolitan Opera has been broadcasting its Saturday afternoon performances live around the world via radio since the '30s, and on PBS since the '70s, but only recently has the technology developed to allow broadcasts on a scale more appropriate to the Met's grandeur - the big screen. We certainly agree with his impression that the sound quality and the crisp high-definition images left little to be desired, as did the skillfully managed camera translations from a distant three-dimensional experience to an often larger-than-life two-dimensional one. Of course, as Galvin also points out, opera was never meant to be an art of close-ups but an art of projection - of a human voice and the emotions it bears arcing into space, and even a state-of-the-art screen and sound system can't reproduce the feeling a listener gets from a live voice soaring, filling a hall, enveloping everyone in their seats, a feeling we remember well from our last of many live and in person experiences at the Met last spring, a colossal production of Verdi's Aida.

Slovenian wine tasting at Tarragona Wine & Food

Tarragona Wine & Food in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood conducted a tasting of Slovenian wines on Friday, March 16. Although we missed the actual wine tasting, we decided to swing by the store the following afternoon and we were lucky! The proprietress was kind enough to let us taste the same wine selection offered at the tasting the evening before! We enjoyed a variety of wines and took home a few bottles, including two Croatian wines (Malvazija and Plavac Mali) unrelated to the tasting but equally exciting.

The following Slovenian wines were included in the tasting:

Primosic Ribolla Gialla (2005) - Ribolla Gialla is a white-wine grape, grown in Italy's Friuli-Venezia Giulia and in Slovenia, where it's known as Rebula. Ribolla's been grown in Friuli since the twelfth century and is thought to be a native of this region. This variety produces dry, crisp citrus-flavored wines that are medium-bodied and deeply colored.

Primosic Vitovska (2005) - Vitovska is a white-berried vine, which has always been cultivated in Friuli Venezia Giulia stretching across the coastal strip up to Istria. The name of the vine has Slovenian origin, and was often called Vitovska Garganija. The second name is not deceiving as the bunch of grapes, since the shape and size of its berry has nothing to do with the Venetian garganega. Some believe that the origin could be around the area of Vipacco, known as Vitovlie, but this vine is still found throughout the whole Karst region.

Dveri-Pax Eisenthür (2005) - Blend of 70% Pinot Gris and 30% Šipon (Furmint) from one of the most famous sites Eisenthür near Jeruzalem, in the Ljutomer-Ormož region, Slovenia. Wine is characterized by fine, creamy aromas and a perfect balance achieved through the traditional combination of these varieties.

Movia Pinot Nero (?) - Pinot Noir is known as Pinot Nero in Italian and Modri Pinot in Slovenian. The Movia estate has been making wine for more than three centuries. In 1820 it was purchased by the Kristancic family, its current owners. The vineyards are located on both sides of the Italian/Slovenian border. Interestingly, the entire estate was in Italy until the end of World War I, when 18 of the 38 acres became part of Slovenia, including the physical winery. As Alice Fiorilli writes in Expanding the Borders the political border is somewhat meaningless to people who have lived there for generations and endured savage wars for control of the region. Whether in the Collio, as the hilly region is called on the Italian side, or Brda, is it is known in Slovenia, the land is the same.

Spring at Washington Park Arboretum