I ushered the opera Marriage of Figaro the day after the Trump / Clinton presidential election. Facebook was burning up. I felt horrible on that morning as I was planning on celebrating our first woman president…not! I decided that I couldn’t even ride Cisco as I might take my sadness and grumpiness out on him. But I did go to Cisco and was lucky enough to have multi world champion trainer, Erin Patterson, ride him. When I went to the pasture to get Cisco, I forgot about the election. After I watched Erin ride Cisco she gave me a few pointers on more finesse.
After Cisco was done, I watched an old friend take a lesson with Erin. You could feel her happiness to be back involved with horses pouring out of her pores. It has been a long long time since she got to ride because life got in the way.
I went home and watched bits of Ellen and Steve Harvey while part of me tried to nap.
It wasn’t long before it was time to get cleaned up and get my usher outfit on.
The Marriage of Figaro is a long opera. The first act is an hour and a half. Then there is a thirty minute intermission. The second act is over an hour. At intermission I was asking the patrons if they loved this opera. One woman stopped and exclaimed, “This opera is great and just what we need on a day like today!” I have to confess. It took me a full thirty seconds or so to remember the nation’s anger, my anger and sadness and fear of facing a brand new scary world.
So, if you are feeling hatred, sadness, anger etc, The Marriage of Figaro is in it’s last week. I recommend that you get tickets and soak up the magic of the amazing opera voices, the clever and tricky plot and laugh at all the humor included in the opera. Also, since it is a long opera, you probably won’t get home till the next day, so that takes nearly an entire day of not being sad, scared or mad at the USA political system. Go to the Opera!