Puccini!

Hello from Lucca! It has been a fascinating, spontaneous trip thus far. We arrived in the afternoon, changed clothes and went immediately into the city to scavenge for food. We are very glad that we did, because on our way we happened upon the home where the famous composer, Giacomo Puccini, grew up! Outside the square, which now has a statue of his likeness, there was a five-string orchestra with two opera singers, performing some songs from his operas! What a lovely, accidental concert!

It lasted about an hour, and Ankur fell in love. It was his first exposure to opera, and he was so excited (as was I) that we went and got tickets to a Mozart/Puccini concert for tonight.

It did not disappoint. We had FANTASTIC seats -- front row, right in front of the piano so we could see his fingers, and maybe five feet from the singers (I think we got spit on). The seats also came with our own personal Puccini tour guide. As it happened, the man sitting next to us was an opera singer himself. He has been all over the world singing, including DC, NY, Philly, Austria, etc. He was quite excited to see two young people there for the opera, and to have a chance to practice his English. Before the concert began, he took us behind the scenes and introduced us to the performers of the evening, Soprano Chiara Panacci (very good), Baritone Mattia Campetti (a mere 23 years old, and a star), and Massimo Morelli on the piano. Then the concert began, and we were blown away. It was a number of highlights from Mozart and Puccini operas, including The Marriage of Figaro, La Boheme, Don Giovanni, and Madame Butterfly (all in Italian, of course, with no subtitles). One of our favorites was actually the intermezzo from Manon Lescaut, but we loved the singing, too. We left singing "Cinque ... Dieci...!" We had such a fantastic time that we are very much considering returning for another performance tomorrow. We wished that Savta was here with us!

In other news, we wandered into a gelateria on the way to the concert, which is owned by an expatriate from the UK. He was quite friendly, and it was a joy to talk to him until he informed us that the US financial markets had dropped 800 points yesterday. We gasped. Then we reconsidered buying gelato. But hey, we will worry about that when we get back.

We initially had planned to be here for two nights, but our room is so lovely and we are so excited about the opera around here that we decided to extend our stay another night. That gives us only one night in Venice, but we have been there before so it's fine. Tomorrow we will walk the ramparts and seek out some more beautiful music.

That's all for now. We miss you all!