Don't Miss It

There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger for them.

George Eliot
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Aw, who wants to sit through a loud boring opera? Who wants to sleep through Sleeping Beauty? Take me out to the ball game!
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Years ago there was a story in the New York papers about some Japanese men visiting New York on business. They came frequently to work on a very complicated business deal with some American company. Whenever they came the company made sure they were lavishly entertained with top grade hotel accommodations, fine restaurants and always a box seat at Yankee Stadium or at Madison Square Garden to watch the basketball games.

finally one of the Japanese men said "We have baseball in Japan. We have sports. We don't have your opera and your ballet. Why can't we see those?"

The Americans were stunned. Most of them had never seen a ballet, they didn't know where it was or how to get tickets.
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When Rudolph Nurayev came to dance "Sleeping Beauty" for the New York City Ballet a woman I knew got a phone call from her mother at their humble home in small town Indiana saying that her daughter had to see Nurayev dance and tell her all about it;
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I worked for a while at a classical music radio station in New York and one day I had a conversation with an American concert pianist who had just returned from a tour of Europe where he had given a series of solo concerts. He told of giving one concert in Moscow. It was winter there with below zero temperatures.

At mid day they drove him to the concert hall to rehearse with the newly tuned piano. On the way he noticed hundreds of people on the sidewalks, huddled in there coats. He asked about them and was told they were lined up to get a chit at the box office which would enable them to come back later and stand in line again to buy a ticket to his concert. He asked how long they had been there and was told they had started lining up before daybreak.

He said he knew he had to be excellent because those people had suffered for hours through a severe Moscow winter weather just to came and hear him play.

He also said their hunger for music was huge and so was the ovation they gave him.

DB - The Vagabond
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AUTUMN QUESTION

(This is not a contest.)

At what event of the past do you wish you could be present? Why?

dbdacoba@aol.com

Thank you.
DB
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