A Night at the Opera – Act Two

A Night at the Opera – Act Two

After my first trip to the Opera last year, I swore I’d never go through that punishment again. I appear to be a slow learner, because I did go again. Read what you need to know to survive. It just might save a life.

After my first trip to the Opera last year, I swore I’d never go through that punishment again. I appear to be a slow learner, because I did go again. Read what you need to know to survive. It just might save a life.

A year ago, I did something incredibly stupid. I listened to my wife. More specifically, I agreed to join her and some friends for a night at the opera. Well, I did it again.

Right about now, you may be saying, “Hey, Tim, buddy, didn’t you learn from last year’s debacle at the opera? You even wrote about it.”  If you’re one of the five people who actually read that column called A Night at The Opera, thank you for your support. My only excuse can be summed up by Winston Churchill’s wisdom, that ‘Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.’ Clearly, I failed.

I’m still not quite sure what offense I committed for which my penance was to yawn through another evening of arias and over-acting by prima donnas. But I survived, and I have finally learned. And I’m here to impart my new-found wisdom to those husbands who find themselves caught in a similar bind.

Fellas, lesson number one: never under any circumstances let your wife rope you into going to the opera. Tell her you have food poisoning from her tacos (inflicting guilt helps). Or tell her you’ve been drafted to our southern border to defend our country against 11-year-old Guatemalan kids armed with Hello Kitty backpacks. Whatever it takes to get out of going.

We attended one of the most famous operas ever written: La bohème, by Puccini. Now, in my defense, I was only half-listening when my wife suggested the event. I heard something about Bohemian and mistook it for the recent movie, Bohemian Rhapsody, about Freddie Mercury of the rock group Queen. Turns out the only thing this opera had in common with Freddie was that the lead tenor had long hair and liked to strut around the stage a lot. (more…)