Brian and I went to the Met Opera Concert in Prospect Park in Brooklyn last friday. The was an annual free summer concert. This year, Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna led the Met chorus and orchestra for this special concert in the park. The difference of this year concert to the past years was that the past year concerts usually were concentrate on a single opera. The performers sang every things from the first to the last acts. This year they just picked one or two songs from different operas.

The program said that the concert consisted of two half. each had 6 songs. About a third of them were from Verdi such as Overture from La Forza del Destino, "Vedi, le fosche" (chorus) from Il Travatore, Overture from Nabucco, "Parigi, o cara" (duet) from La Traviata, "Va, pensiero" (chorus) from Nabucco. I was glad that the had one of my favorite duets, "Ah, talor del tuo pensiero... Verranno a te"  from Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor. My two favorites of the night must be "E lucevan le stelle" from Puccini's Tosca sung by Roberto Alagna and "Un bel di, vedremo" from Puccini's Madama Butterfly. They were other opera and composers that I have never heard of such as  Catalani's La Wally, but they were pleasant.

The concert did not end with 12 songs as it had said in the program. Theye are seven or eight more for the encore that lasted over an hour. Two or three of these were some famous modern Italian and Spanish pop songs. They also sung the world most popular Puccici's "Nessun dorma" from Turandot and Verdi's "Libiamo ne' lieti calici" from La Traviata.

We brought dinner, wine and champagne for our little picnic while listening to these great music. We took out some sushi, shumai and tempura from the nearby Japanese restaurant, Kiku, in Park Slope. Other audience look surprise when they saw us so well prepared.

The concert ended about a quarter before 11 PM and the Bank of America gave everyone away a free subway ride home. It was one of my memorable night.

Nicky