Month: February 2025

The best opera? The most famous opera? La Traviata at Palm Beach Opera

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Photocall at the opera
Take a bow
Amazing Kravis center
Delicious Violetta
Palm Beach Opera
I love hearing the orchestra warm up

There are some tunes that you would recognize instantly, even if you have never been to the opera. One of them is the party song at the beginning of La Traviata; it is the subject of viral popup chorales, flash mobs, and opera recitals everywhere.

As children, we did not listen to La Traviata at home. My dad preferred the “epic” operas: Wagner, Aida, Nabucco… He had the vinyl box sets by the big conductors of the time, Karajan, Abbado, and the like.

I had the classical music radio show at the university radio station and would, once in a while, play opera songs. But I became enamored with La Traviata through an 80s film: The Music Teacher, which led me down a wonderful rabbit hole to discover Maria Callas, Renée Fleming, and possibly my favorite Violetta: Kiri Te Kanawa.

At any rate, I again had the chance to see La Traviata at the Palm Beach Opera last week in the Kravis Center with Caitlin, a work colleague and fellow opera fan.

The production was amazing! Gabriella Reyes, in her pro debut, hit it out of the ballpark, despite taking the current liberty of pushing the Sempre libera finale to E flat above high C notwithstanding that Verdi wrote it in high C, she is forgiven for following the trend. Mario Chang from Guatemala did a perfect job as Alfredo, and unexpectedly Michael Chioldi surprised as Alfredo’s dad, Giorgio Germont, totally channeling his best Gattopardo.

Palm Beach Opera was impressive in their attention to detail: the décor, the photocall, even crafting an apropos cocktail, the Violetta, which I must say, was delicious.

So if you get a chance to see La Traviata, do not hesitate to go. You are welcome.

Reduce, reuse, and recycle; guilty pleasures (I), bargain hunting.

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I love rummage sales, garage sales, estate sales, and the potential of finding a gem, a bargain. In fact, most of my home was sourced from such sales and Goodwill, Salvation Army, 2nd-hand stores, all those places where you never know what you will find, and treasures await in hiding.

Yes, I am an idealist who thinks we can still fight climate change (how quaintly naïve), and I am a minimalist (you can read about that here) who believes we only actually need the stuff we use constantly.

Briny Breezes is an oxymoron—not the name—the name is fine—but the nature of what it is. Briny Breezes is a retirement community on the Intracoastal Canal, on the water. It is a trailer park, not only is each tiny plot of land where the literal tin cans that their homes are sit, but a trailer park with many residents having boats worth more than their homes—paradoxical indeed. But who am I to judge?

At any rate, every year these nice residents organize a huge rummage sale. There is a building dedicated to clothes, kitchen stuff and jewelry, there is a huge warehouse with art, books, appliances, furniture, lamps, et cetera. This year I went with a couple of colleagues from work, and we had a great time.

The hack, the strategy for this kind of shopping is two-fold: know the sizes and dimensions of what you need, if necessary, carry a tape measure, and have patience, what you need will show up at some point. Also, you can always upgrade if you find a superior product and re-donate the one you got before!

Accept and learn from losing.

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After a two-year winning streak, we knew we were bound to lose at some point, we were hoping it would not be against our archrival.

The beauty of losing is that it makes you dig deeper into yourself to understand what you are made of. It allows you to contemplate life from a different perspective than winning does. I am not breaking new ground here; for example, Pat Conroy wrote about it much better than I did in his My Losing Season, a great read!

There is always some regret: I should have done this or that, should have trained more on this or that. But at the end of the day, it is still just a game, and one of the teams will lose.

Maybe because introspection is not the prettiest thing to do, to dissect a soccer game, the post-mortem, what did we do wrong? What did the other guys do right? When you win, there is no need to go that deep into your reasons for winning, you can celebrate!

Yes, there is more to be learned from losing than from winning, and all that humble pie stuff, it still hurts. Now we must go back to the drawing board, back to training, and back to basics. I can’t wait to start training again. Next season we will win.

Sorolla and the Sea at the Norton in West Palm Beach

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Maybe because the Joaquín Sorolla house and museum is around the corner from my family home in Madrid, Sorolla was the first painter I connected to. Maybe it was his Mediterranean scenes that took me to my own Summers in the Med. Whatever it might have been, Sorolla has a special place in my heart.

When I am in Madrid, I often sneak into the garden of the Sorolla house museum to read, and occasionally I will go inside to visit the paintings like old friends (you can read about that here).

So when I learned the Norton Museum was hosting an exhibition to complement their existing (huge) Sorolla painting, I had to see it.

It did not disappoint. Most of the paintings are on loan from the Hispanic Society in New York City which commissioned many paintings from Sorolla. The exhibit includes some drafts of paintings, a bronze sculpture from his dear friend and paisano Benlliure -the marble one is in the garden in Sorolla’s house, even one of Sorolla’s palettes!

Sorolla is known as the painter of light, leaving behind the Impressionists, and creating a space of his own, beyond labels.

If you are in the Palm Beach area you should see it, you are welcome.