<div><li>January: DIE FRAU OHNE SCHATTEN. The empress (Deborah Voight) is a half human, half spirit who cannot bear a child. She receives an order from Keikobad, the spirit god, to get a shadow within three days. Otherwise her husband will be turned to stone, and she will have to return to her father. She and her nurse go down to earth to buy the shadow from the wife of the dyer Barak. They tempt the wife by offers of jewelry and riches. The wife becomes suspicious and tells them to return in three days. The wily nurse has her own ways of enticing the wife. Complications ensue. <li> * * * * DON CARLO. It's the sixteenth century. Don Carlo, a prince, finds his love, Elizabeth of Valois, in a dark forest outside Fontainebleau. Unfortunately for the young couple, she is betrothed by her father to King Phillip of Spain as part of a peace treaty between Spain and France. Don Carlo presses his love for Elizabeth even after the royal marriage through his friend Roderigo, played by Dmitri Hvorostovsky (pure beautiful according to M), who also presses the plight of the people of Flanders. This leads to a royal mess, as you can imagine. <li> * * * * IDOMENEO. Early opera by Mozart. Slow and simple. Idomeno, the King of Crete, played by Placido Domingo with a cold, on his return from the Trojan war is shipwrecked, but saves his life by promising Neptune that he will kill the first person he meets on his return to Crete. This rash promise leads to big trouble, especially when he bumps into Idamante, the heir to the throne. <li> Mar 2. * * * * WAR and PEACE by Prokofiev at the Met. Fine singing by Dmitri Hvorostovsky as Prince Andre. Good performance by Anna Netrebko as Natasha. We discover that the war between Russia and France in 1812 was fought (1) that Pierre could find the secret of life on the battlefield, (2) that Count Andre could die as a hero from wounds in the battle of Borodino, (3) that Natasha could nurse him before he died in the hospital after the battle. <li> * * * * Mar 13. A memorial opera (Mozart's DON GIOVANNI) for John White, a friend who was the General Manager of the City Opera for about 30 years. He died in November at the age of 91. He had an overpowering love for opera and the stage and remembered every performance he had ever seen and heard. He was one of Marian's greatest fans at the Met Museum. In his last years he continued to visit the Met, just barely able to move with tiny little baby steps and a walker. He was jewish and escaped from the Nazis in the thirties, leaving behind his childhood Catholic sweetheart whom he never married, because he was afraid of what might become of her as the Nazis killed the jews. He became a great friend of her and her husband, who also came to America. He left his estate to their daughter, a lawyer in Florida. <li> * * * * Mar 20. Open rehearsal of NY Philharmonic. Charles Dutoit leading the orchestra in Berlioz' SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE. Dutoit gave himself a two hour workout as he conducted the incredibly melodious Berlioz work. Best moment: during the Witches Sabbath, when the church bells chimed in on the cataphony of strange noises, groans, and cries at the witches' orgy. <li> * * * * August: A weekend of music at Bard. We were the guests of Gladys Thomas in her spatious home overlooking the Hudson River in Germantown, NY, just 10 minutes north of the Bard campus. The festival concentrated on Mahler, his contemporaries and his music, written in the late nineteenth century.<li> * * * * Sept 14. Soiree at Lucy's. Andrew Tchekmazov and Irina Nuzova, piano playing Beethoven, Frank, Chopin, Schumann, and Martinu. A breathtaking recital by world class musicians just a few feet from my comfortable chair. So different from the concert hall, where the orchestra is so distant and far away that you might as well be listening to a CD. * * * * Oct 12. ANDREA CHENIER at the Met. Placido Domingo as Chenier and Sylvia Valayre as Maddalena brave the horrors of the French Revolution. Maddalena, daughter of the haughty Countess de Coigny, falls on evil times after the revolution and also falls for Chenier, a poet, who is condemned to death by the Tribunal. Maddalena, not willing to live without Chenier, offers to die herself by exchanging places with another young woman who has been condemned. Romanticism raised to the level of madness.