Opera House Quotes

Do good works or commission an opera house or just take it out and gaze at it longingly when you think of the handsome prince you might have made your own. For the record, I favor the latter option, preferably paired with copious tears and the recitation of bad poetry.

I want a shower the size of the Sydney Opera House, because you know damn well I sing in the shower. And I might as well make millions off my cleanliness.

Theatres are curious places, magician's trick-boxes where the golden memories of dramtic triumphs linger like nostalgic ghosts, and where the unexplainable, the fantastic, the tragic, the comic and the absurd are routine occurences on and off the stage. Murders, mayhem, politcal intrigue, lucrative business, secret assignations, and of course, dinner.

She had lost herself somewhere along the frontier between her inventions, her stories, her fantasies and her true self. The boundaries had become effaced, the tracks lost, she had walked into pure chaos, and not a chaos which carried her like the galloping of romantic riders in operas and legends, but which suddenly revealed the stage props: a papier-mâché horse.

Percy, I could say,I think you are the most beautiful creature on God's green earth and I would very much like to find a hidden corner of this opera house and engage in some behavior that could only be termedsinful.Percy, I could say, I am almost certain that I am in love with you.

They crested a rise, and there it was, in the hollow between rolling hills—a low, square building, ghostly gray in the moonlight. "Is that it?" asked Hamilton. "It probably isn't the local opera house," groaned Ian.

He fills me with horror and I do not hate him. How can I hate him, Raoul? Think of Erik at my feet, in the house on the lake, underground. He accuses himself, he curses himself, he implores my forgiveness!...He confesses his cheat. He loves me! He lays at my feet an immense and tragic love. ... He has carried me off for love!...He has imprisoned me with him, underground, for love!...But he respects me: he crawls, he moans, he weeps!...And, when I stood up, Raoul, and told him that I could only despise him if he did not, then and there, give me my liberty...he offered it...he offered to show me the mysterious road...Only...only he rose too...and I was made to remember that, though he was not an angel, nor a ghost, nor a genius, he remained the voice...for he sang. And I listened ... and stayed!...That night, we did not exchange another word. He sang me to sleep.

He’d walked as a ghost in the gloomy bowels of this opera house for so long, darkness had become his brother, which was fitting, since his father was the night, and sunlight their forgotten friend.

Sometimes we’re on a collision course, and we just don’t know it. Whether it’s by accident or by design, there’s not a thing we can do about it. A woman in Paris was on her way to go shopping, but she had forgotten her coat - went back to get it. When she had gotten her coat, the phone had rung, so she’d stopped to answer it; talked for a couple of minutes. While the woman was on the phone, Daisy was rehearsing for a performance at the Paris Opera House. And while she was rehearsing, the woman, off the phone now, had gone outside to get a taxi. Now a taxi driver had dropped off a fare earlier and had stopped to get a cup of coffee. And all the while, Daisy was rehearsing. And this cab driver, who dropped off the earlier fare; who’d stopped to get the cup of coffee, had picked up the lady who was going to shopping, and had missed getting an earlier cab. The taxi had to stop for a man crossing the street, who had left for work five minutes later than he normally did, because he forgot to set off his alarm. While that man, late for work, was crossing the street, Daisy had finished rehearsing, and was taking a shower. And while Daisy was showering, the taxi was waiting outside a boutique for the woman to pick up a package, which hadn’t been wrapped yet, because the girl who was supposed to wrap it had broken up with her boyfriend the night before, and forgot. When the package was wrapped, the woman, who was back in the cab, was blocked by a delivery truck, all the while Daisy was getting dressed. The delivery truck pulled away and the taxi was able to move, while Daisy, the last to be dressed, waited for one of her friends, who had broken a shoelace. While the taxi was stopped, waiting for a traffic light, Daisy and her friend came out the back of the theater. And if only one thing had happened differently: if that shoelace hadn’t broken; or that delivery truck had moved moments earlier; or that package had been wrapped and ready, because the girl hadn’t broken up with her boyfriend; or that man had set his alarm and got up five minutes earlier; or that taxi driver hadn’t stopped for a cup of coffee; or that woman had remembered her coat, and got into an earlier cab, Daisy and her friend would’ve crossed the street, and the taxi would’ve driven by. But life being what it is - a series of intersecting lives and incidents, out of anyone’s control - that taxi did not go by, and that driver was momentarily distracted, and that taxi hit Daisy, and her leg was crushed.

Also she went in for culture, which gave her a certain moral authority. It wouldn't now; but people believed, then, that culture could make you better - a better person. They believed it could uplift you, or the women believed it. They hadn't yet seen Hitler at the opera house.

I'm sick and tired of having a forest and a torture chamber in my house... I want to have a nice quiet flat with ordinary doors and windows and a wife inside it, like anybody else!

A delicate scent hung in the air as we strolled down the long boulevard toward the Opera House holding hands. Paris had come to life in a very special way, the lights of the Eiffel Tower a gentle reminder that nothing mattered once that starry blanket covered the great city, except love. Love was the reason Paris existed. For those lonely in their soul, their heart a barren wasteland starving for nourishment, she offered hope. For those like Caroline and I, lucky enough to have found each other and begin the healing process to repair our brokenness, Paris was a bastion to love's transforming power. A year ago I could not have pictured myself holding hands with someone as nice as Caroline, as lovely and unpretentious. She was pretty, but her soul made her beautiful. I loved everything about her, including her damage.

The opera…is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.

New Orleans, it was often observed, was the first American metropolis to build an opera house, but the last to build a sewage system.

people believed, then, that Culture could make you better – a better person. They believed it could uplift you, or the women believed it. They hadn’t yet seen Hitler at the opera house.

Stay away from the underground lake I implore, The Siren will see you are heard of no more.

What shall I give? and which are my miracles? 2. Realism is mine--my miracles--Take freely, Take without end--I offer them to you wherever your feet can carry you or your eyes reach. 3. Why! who makes much of a miracle? As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles, Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the water, Or stand under trees in the woods, Or talk by day with any one I love--or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love, Or sit at the table at dinner with my mother, Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car, Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of a summer forenoon, Or animals feeding in the fields, Or birds--or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, Or the wonderfulness of the sundown--or of stars shining so quiet and bright, Or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new moon in spring; Or whether I go among those I like best, and that like me best--mechanics, boatmen, farmers, Or among the savans--or to the _soiree_--or to the opera. Or stand a long while looking at the movements of machinery, Or behold children at their sports, Or the admirable sight of the perfect old man, or the perfect old woman, Or the sick in hospitals, or the dead carried to burial, Or my own eyes and figure in the glass; These, with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles, The whole referring--yet each distinct and in its place. 4. To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, Every inch of space is a miracle, Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same, Every cubic foot of the interior swarms with the same; Every spear of grass--the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that concerns them, All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles. To me the sea is a continual miracle; The fishes that swim--the rocks--the motion of the waves--the ships, with men in them, What stranger miracles are there?

Common dates in romance movies: Seats in a box at the opera or ballet Walking around a beautiful foreign city Night-time picnics in empty parks Finding some gorgeous abandoned house that the boy fills with candles Common dates in real life: Nando's...

Or she's starting a new life with a man named Raoul. Or she left to get a nose job and is recuperating in a subterranean labyrinth beneath an opera house in France.

After the opera house, we toured our way through a couple of churches and visited the Mark Twain museum. My personal highlight was the toilet labeled "Mark Twain sat here.

Our food is a sign of what we’ve lost in general. I think if we could start slowing down for food, and rebuilding the quality of our plates, we could start rebuilding what we’ve lost in our culture. As my boss says, culture starts in the kitchen, not in the opera house.

great sport, during their few idle hours, of sitting in the house’s green-shuttered windows and watching the doings at headquarters through opera glasses, then offering commentary to passing police officials.

Beth knew in that instant that she was not a true lady, and never would be. A true lady would have fallen out of her chair in a gentle swoon or screamed down the opera house. Instead, Beth leaned into Ian’s touch, liking it.

The whole truth?" Miss Bart laughed. "What is the truth? Where a woman is concerned, it's the story that's easiest to believe. In this case it's a great deal easier to believe Bertha Dorset's story than mine, because she has a big house and an opera box, and it's convenient to be on good terms with her

Someone put opera on inside the house. Someone changed it to hip-hop, thank God. Someone started a shower. Someone vacuumed. Again. Life. In all its mundane majesty. And you couldn't take advantage of it if you were sitting on your ass in the shadows... whether it was in actuality, or metaphorically because you were trapped in an attic's darkness.

Since I met you, I feel like I can see the operating system of the world- and it is unrequited love. That is why everyone’s doing everything. Every book, opera house, moon shot and manifesto is here because someone, somewhere, lit up silent when someone else came into the room, and then quietly burned when they didn’t notice them.

There, up in the sky, she noticed for the first time a gigantic mounded cloud, as large and elaborately moulded as a baroque opera house and lit from below and at the sides by pink and creamy hues. It sailed beyond her, improbable and romantic, following in the blue sky the course she was taking down below. It seemed to her that it must be a good omen.

In the enormous whale-belly of steel and stone carved out to form the long-enduring old opera house, Rick Deckard found an echoing, noisy, slightly miscontrived rehearsal taking place.

Standing in the back of the dark opera house and gazing at the huge stage before them, gay with gold-scrolled scenery and sumptuously costumed singers, the air vivid with bright music, was one of the most enthralling experiences of Blanche's life. For a time, she forgot her doubts about reality in the sheer delight of illusion. But, as Rose reminded her during the intermission, perhaps it wasn't illusion. Perhaps it was a glimpse of what reality was really like.

Only an unsatisfied preference is bad. In other words, he argues that although it is good to have fulfilled whatever desires one might have, one is not better off having a fulfilled desire than having no desire at all. By way of example, consider the case in which we ‘paint the tree nearest to Sydney Opera house red and give Kate a pill that makes her wish that the tree nearest to Sydney Opera House were red’*. Professor Fehige plausibly denies that we do Kate any favour in doing this. She is no better off than had we done nothing. What matters is not that people have satisfied desires but that they do not have unsatisfied ones. It is the avoidance of frustration that is important. * Fehige, Christoph, ‘A Pareto Principle for Possible People’, 513–14.

Have they known scorn like you Five cellars down?

Doors opened at seven, the show started at eight. In pubs and clubs and house parties across the galaxy, the viewers at home were drunk by six.

Long walks are off, and alas, bathing in the sea; fillet steaks and apples and raw blackberries (teeth difficulties) and reading fine print. But there is a great deal left. Operas and concerts, and reading, and the enormous pleasure of dropping into bed and going to sleep, and dreams of every variety. Almost best of all, sitting in the sun--gently drowsing and there you are again--remembering. I remember, I remember, the house where I was born....

The captain would...turn off the conversation, like a consummate man of the world, to some topic of general interest, such as the Opera, the Prince's last ball at Carlton House, or the weather - that blessing to society.

I remember to this day how easily I could grasp what he called his tentative ideas when he talked about the architectural style of the capitalist era, a subject which he said had fascinated him since his own student days, speaking in particular of the compulsive sense of order and the tendency towards monumentalism evident in law courts and penal institutions, railway stations and stock exchanges, opera houses and lunatic asylums, and the dwelling built to rectangular grid patterns for the labor force.

Sublime wonders lie in store, I am shown a regal residence; a mighty kingdom, an empire with more grandeur than before ...

Music helps to forget This forsaken tomb, That is my abode Cellars down Far below Under the ground, ...

Firmin, might I remind you that we are the Paris Opera House. Drama is our bread and butter!

The catacombs deep beneath the opera house are my domain. In them, I fall into the sweet, accepting embrace of darkness and the unassuming simplicity of silence and secrets.

So that’s an opera house, is it?’ said Granny. ‘Looks like someone built a great big box and glued the architecture on afterwards.

If they liked a tune, they wanted to hear it again—now! The vibe was more like CBGB than your typical contemporary opera house.

The doors sealed them in with the music and sealed the world out and suddenly it was clear that building an opera house was a basic act of human survival

there are places in the world where real life is still happening, far away from here, in a pre-Hitler Europe, where hundreds of lights are lit every evening, ladies and gentlemen gather to drink coffee with cream in oak-panelled rooms, or sit comfortably in splendid coffee-houses under gilt chandeliers, stroll arm in arm to the opera or the ballet, observe from close-up the lives of great artists, passionate love affairs, broken hearts, the painter’s girlfriend falling in love with his best friend the composer, and going out at midnight bareheaded in the rain to stand alone on the ancient bridge whose reflection trembles in the river. *

Opera houses! Cities on the moon! Ridiculous. They would all do better to put their faces on the curbs and wait for the boys who come through the city dragging sledges stacked with corpses.

Agnes shut her eyes, clenched her fists, opened her mouth and screamed. It started low. Plaster dust drifted down from the ceiling. The prisms on the chandelier chimed gently as they shook. It rose, passing quickly through the mysterious pitch at fourteen cycles per second where the human spirit begins to feel distinctly uncomfortable about the universe and the place in it of the bowels. Small items around the Opera House vibrated off shelves and smashed on the floor. The note climbed, rang like a bell, climbed again. In the Pit, all the violin strings snapped, one by one. As the tone rose, the crystal prisms shook in the chandelier. In the bar, champagne corks fired a salvo. Ice jingled and shattered in its bucket. A line of wine-glasses joined in the chorus, blurred around the rims, and then exploded like hazardous thistledown with attitude. There were harmonics and echoes that caused strange effects. In the dressing-rooms the No. 3 greasepaint melted. Mirrors cracked, filling the ballet school with a million fractured images. Dust rose, insects fell. In the stones of the Opera House tiny particles of quartz danced briefly... Then there was silence, broken by the occasional thud and tinkle. Nanny grinned. 'Ah,' she said, 'now the opera's over.

ON THE BANKS of every great river you’ll find a monument to excess.” Kanai recalled the list of examples Nirmal had provided to prove this: the opera house of Manaus, the temple of Karnak, the ten thousand pagodas of Pagan. In the years since, he had visited many of those places, and it made him laugh to think his uncle had insisted that Canning too had a place on that list: “The mighty Matla’s monument is Port Canning.

And I did work out something: that the rich of the earth indeed create misery, but they cannot bear to see it. They are weaklings and fools just like you. As long as they have enough to eat and can grease their floors with butter so that even the crumbs that fall from your table grow fat, they can't look with indifference on a man collapsing from hunger - although, of course, it must be in front of their house that he collapses.

Maybe I can do some writing then. The phrase made him sick. It had no meaning anymore. Like a word that is repeated until it becomes gibberish that sentence, for him, had been used to extinction. It sounded silly; like some bit of cliché from a soap opera. Hero saying in dramatic tones – Now, by God, maybe I can do some writing. Senseless. For a moment, though, he wondered if it was true. Now that she was leaving could he forget about her and really get some work done? Quit his job? Go somewhere and hold up in a cheap furnished room and write? You have $123.89 in the bank, his mind informed him. He pretended it was the only thing that kept him from it. But, far back in his mind, he wondered if he could write anything. Often the question threw itself at him when he was least expecting it. You have four hours every morning, the statement would rise like a menacing wraith. You have time to write many thousands of words. Why don't you? And the answer was always lost in a tangle of becauses and wells and endless reasons that he clung to like a drowning man at straws.(“Mad House”)

I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the Speaker of the United State House of Representatives. “We’re doing great. Turn on any news channel, they’ll tell you. Taxes are low, business is booming, crime is down, the Patriots win the Super Bowl every year, and we’re finally getting our country back. I’ll admit, it used to be a real nightmare around here.

NOBODY LIKES a riot except looters and journalists. The Metropolitan Police, being the go-ahead and dynamic modern police service that it is, has any number of contingency plans for dealing with civil disturbance. From farmers with truckloads of manure to suburban anarchists on a weekend break and Saturday jihadists. What I suspect they didn’t have plans for was just over two thousand enraged opera lovers pouring out of the Royal Opera House and going on a mad rampage through Covent Garden.

In life, loss was the engine that set Wilder's fiction in motion. Exile propelled the powerful emotional current of the Little House books, an intensely felt nostalgia for people and places lost to her. That emotion was absent in "Free Land," relegating it to homesteading soap opera. Its loosely linked anecdotes were joined not by familial love but by Lane's, and the Post's, ideology.

None of them were greatly interested in the election except as a national soap opera in which the closeness of the result was more exciting than the identity of the winner. Individually, they were passionate about GP fundholding, academy schools, asylum, but none of them trusted any party to keep a promise about any of these issues. Louisa struggled to believe that she could change herself, let alone the world.

A faith-healer may or may not start out with fraud in mind. But to his amazement, his patients actually seem to be improving. Their emotions are genuine, their gratitude heart-felt. When the healer is criticized, such people rush to his defence. Several elderly attendees of the channelling at the Sydney Opera House were incensed after the Sixty Minutes expose: ‘Never mind what they say,’ they told Alvarez, ‘we believe in you`. These successes may be enough to convince many charlatans, no matter how cynical they were at the beginning, that they actually have mystical powers. Maybe they’re not successful every time. The powers come and go, they tell themselves. They have to cover the down time. If they must cheat a little now and then, it serves a higher purpose, they tell themselves. Their spiel is consumer-tested. It works.

There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before. Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York--every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler's thumb. At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby's enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors-d'oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another. By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived, no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums. The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing up-stairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colors, and hair shorn in strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names. The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the centre of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light. Suddenly one of the gypsies, in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and, moving her hands like Frisco, dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary hush; the orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her, and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray's understudy from the FOLLIES. The party has begun.

Pushing through the market square, So many mothers sighing. News had just come over, We had five years left to cry in. News guy wept and told us, Earth was really dying. Cried so much his face was wet, then I knew he was not lying. I heard telephones, opera house, favourite melodies. I saw boys, toys, electric irons and T.V.s. My brain hurt like a warehouse, It had no room to spare. I had to cram so many things To store everything in there. And all the fat-skinny people. And all the tall-short people. And all the nobody people. And all the somebody people. I never thought I'd need so many people. A girl my age went off her head, hit some tiny children. If the black hadn't a-pulled her off, I think she would have killed them. A soldier with a broken arm Fixed his stare to the wheel of a Cadillac. A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest, and a queer threw up at the sight of that. I think I saw you in an ice-cream parlour, Drinking milk shakes cold and long. Smiling and waving and looking so fine, Don't think you knew you were in this song. And it was cold and it rained so I felt like an actor, And I thought of Ma and I wanted to get back there. Your face, your race, the way that you talk, I kiss you, you're beautiful, I want you to walk. We've got five years, Stuck on my eyes. Five years, What a surprise! We've got five years, My brain hurts a lot. Five years, That's all we've got. - Five Years

Your family is like a fucking soap opera. What more could there be?’ Ted says. ‘Maybe she’s ill,’ she says. ‘Maybe that’s why they’re selling the house.

The grandeur of the opera house thrilled Laura too. It took thousand of employees to keep such a vast place running. There were hundreds of artists involved behind the scenes - stagehands, electricians, set builders, property masters, costumers, dressers, wigmakers, and milliners. There is a beehive under every pot of honey on the island of Manhattan, thought Enza.

If taking on a wife for life in an institution called marriage were a sign of male privilege, why did “husband” derive from the Germanic “house” and the Old Norse for “bound” or “bondage”?68 Why did it also come from words meaning “a male kept for breeding,” “one who tills the soil,” and “the male of the pair of lower animals.”69 Conversely, if marriage were as awful for women as many feminists claim, why is it the centerpiece of female fantasies in myths and legends of the past, or romance novels and soap operas of the present? Spartan boys who were deprived of their families were deprived, not privileged. Boys deprived of women’s love until they risked their lives at work or war were also deprived—or dead. Training boys to kill boys was considered moral when it led to survival, immoral only when it threatened survival. In these respects, “patriarchy” created male deprivation and male death, not male privilege.

If I were your mother, I would also warn you to beware of buildings that claim to be the houses of God. If heard it said once, jokingly, that on their days off, when they are not actively intervening in human affairs or shoring up the sweetness of the earth, the orishas get together in a little apartment in a poor section of Havana around a very big screen television and laugh themselves silly a the unceasing soap opera that is our lives, all the while puffing on good Cuban cigars and swigging cheap rum. And, darling, whether you imagine one big white distant god or many more particular brown ones who like their little pleasures, I would tell you to get off your butt and out of the house if you want to make contact. If you go to a mausoleum, you'll find dead bodies. Living gods inhabit a living world.

He fills me with horror and I do not hate him. How can I hate him, Raoul? Think of Erik at my feet, in the house on the lake, underground. He accuses himself, he curses himself, he implores my forgiveness!... He confesses his cheat. He loves me! He lays at my feet an immense and tragic love... He has carried me off for love!... He has imprisoned me with him, underground, for love!... But he respects me: he crawls, he moans, he weeps!

There’s no culture here,” she said. But if there had been an opera house or a symphony orchestra—that’s what she meant by “culture”—she never would have gone. She thought she was sophisticated—she liked fine clothes, good liquor—but she knew nothing about art. She didn’t read anything but romance novels. There were no freshly cut flowers around the house. She mostly watched TV and smoked in bed all day, as far as I could tell. That was her “culture.

Moreno, Morelos, Cantine, Gomez, Gutierrez, Villanousul, Ureta, Licon, Navarro, Iturbi; Jorge, Filomena, Nena, Manuel, Jose, Tomas, Ramona. This man walked and this man sang and this man had three wives; and this man died of this, and that of that, and the third from another thing, and the fourth was shot, and the fifth was stabbed and the sixth fell straight down dead; and the seventh drank deep and died dead, and the eighth died in love, and the ninth fell from him horse, and the tenth coughed blood, and the eleventh stopped his heart, and the twelfth used to laugh much, and the thirteenth was a dancing one, and the fourteenth was most beautiful of all, the fifteenth had ten children and the sixteenth is one of those children as is the seventeenth; and the eighteenth was Tomas and did well with his guitar; the next three cut maize in their fields, had three lovers each; the twenty-second was never loved; the twenty-third sold tortillas, patting and shaping them each at the curb before the Opera House with her little charcoal stove; and the twenty-fourth beat his wife and now she walks proudly in the town and is merry with new men and here he stands bewildered by this unfair thing, and the twenty-fifth drank several quarts of river with his lungs and was pulled forth in a net, and the twenty-sixth was a great thinker and his brain now sleeps like a burnt plum in his skull.

What kind of opera was The Thieving Magpie? I wondered. All I knew about it was the monotonous melody of its overture and its mysterious title. We had had a recording of the overture in the house when I was a boy. It had been conducted by Toscanini.

Desperately trying to remember her manners, she curtseyed and murmured, "Your Grace." The smile lines at his eyes deepened subtly. "You appear to be in need of rescue. Why don't you come inside with me, away from this riffraff? The duchess is eager to meet you." As Pandora hesitated, thoroughly intimidated, he assured her. "I'm quite trustworthy. In fact, I'm very nearly an angel. You'll come to love me in no time." "Take heed," Lord St. Vincent advised Pandora sardonically, fastening the loose sides of his vest. "My father is the pied piper of gullible women." "That's not true," the duke said, "The non-gullible ones follow me as well." Pandora couldn't help chuckling. She looked up into silvery-blue eyes lit with sparks of humor and playfulness. There was something reassuring about his presence, the sense of a man who truly liked women. When she and Cassandra were children, they had fantasized about a handsome father who would lavish them with affection and advice, and spoil them just a little, but not too much. A father who might have let them stand on his feet to dance. This man looked very much like the one Pandora had imagined. She moved forward and took his arm. "How was your journey, my dear?" the duke asked as he escorted her into the house. Before Pandora could reply, Lord St. Vincent spoke from behind them. "Lady Pandora doesn't like small talk, Father. She would prefer to discuss topics such as Darwin, or women's suffrage." "Naturally an intelligent young woman would wish to skip over mundane chitchat," the duke said, giving Pandora such an approving glance that she fairly glowed. "However," he continued thoughtfully, "most people need to be guided into a feeling of safety before they dare reveal their opinions to someone they've only just met. There's a beginning to everything, after all. Every opera has its prelude, every sonnet its opening quatrain. Small talk is merely a way of helping a stranger to trust you, by first finding something you can both agree on." "No one's ever explained it that way before," Pandora said with a touch of wonder. "It actually makes sense. But why must it be so often about weather? Isn't there something else we all agree on? Runcible spoons- everyone likes those, don't they? And teatime, and feeding ducks." "Blue ink," the duke added. "And a cat's purr. And summer storms- although I suppose that brings us back to weather." "I wouldn't mind talking about weather with you, Your Grace," Pandora said ingenuously. The duke laughed gently. "What a delightful girl.

It was a wonderful night. Central City is two miles high; at first you get drunk on the altitude, then you get tired, and there’s a fever in your soul. We approached the lights around the opera house down the narrow dark street; then we took a sharp right and hit some old saloons with swinging doors. Most of the tourists were in the opera. We started off with a few extra-size beers. There was a player piano. Beyond the back door was a view of mountainsides in the moonlight. I let out a yahoo. The night was on.

As hard as the diamonds in your smile, the wind carries its hammers with no hands and sustains a moan with no mouth, seems to cradle solitude in its rough arms like firewood to be burned in my house as it passes through and asks, “Where does she sparkle from?

Later he would tell her that their story began at the Royal Hungarian Opera House, the night before he left for Paris on the Western Europe Express. The year was 1937; the month was September, the evening unseasonably cold. His brother had insisted on taking him to the opera as a parting gift. The show was Tosca and their seats were at the top of the house. Not for them the three marble-arched doorways, the façade with its Corinthian columns and heroic entablature. Theirs was a humble side entrance with a red-faced ticket taker, a floor of scuffed wood, walls plastered with crumbling opera posters. Girls in knee-length dresses climbed the stairs arm in arm with young men in threadbare suits; pensioners argued with their white-haired wives as they shuffled up the five narrow flights. At the top, a joyful din: a refreshment salon lined with mirrors and wooden benches, the air hazy with cigarette smoke. A doorway at its far end opened onto the concert hall itself, the great electric-lit cavern of it, with its ceiling fresco of Greek immortals and its gold-scrolled tiers. Andras had never expected to see an opera here, nor would he have if Tibor hadn’t bought the tickets. But it was Tibor’s opinion that residence in Budapest must include at least one evening of Puccini at the Operaház. Now Tibor leaned over the rail to point out Admiral Horthy’s box, empty that night except for an ancient general in a hussar’s jacket. Far below, tuxedoed ushers led men and women to their seats, the men in evening dress, the women’s hair glittering with jewels.

(I know, it's a poem but oh well). Why! who makes much of a miracle? As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles, Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the water, Or stand under trees in the woods, Or talk by day with any one I love--or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love, Or sit at table at dinner with my mother, Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car, Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of a summer forenoon, Or animals feeding in the fields, Or birds--or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, Or the wonderfulness of the sun-down--or of stars shining so quiet and bright, Or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new moon in spring; Or whether I go among those I like best, and that like me best-- mechanics, boatmen, farmers, Or among the savans--or to the soiree--or to the opera, Or stand a long while looking at the movements of machinery, Or behold children at their sports, Or the admirable sight of the perfect old man, or the perfect old woman, Or the sick in hospitals, or the dead carried to burial, Or my own eyes and figure in the glass; These, with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles, The whole referring--yet each distinct, and in its place. To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, Every cubic inch of space is a miracle, Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same, Every foot of the interior swarms with the same; Every spear of grass--the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that concerns them, All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles. To me the sea is a continual miracle; The fishes that swim--the rocks--the motion of the waves--the ships, with men in them, What stranger miracles are there?

Come devono essere tristi, quei figli unici. Crescere in una casa piena di adulti, sempre in minoranza, sempre sconfitti, nemmeno un po' di quella stupidità sfrenata, niente scherzi da poter ripetere cento volte, nessuno con cui cantare, nessuno con cui litigare, nessuno con cui fare il principe, o lo schiavo [...] in seguito, quando i genitori cadono in disgrazia e diventano essere umani incasinati e banali e si trasformano pian piano da persone che si prendono cura di te in individui di cui ci si deve prendere cura, chi ci sarà ad affrontare con te quelle crescenti frustrazioni, a riflettere sulle migliaia di dettagli insignificanti di quella soap opera a lungo condivisa che non significa nulla per gli altri? E quando infine se ne saranno andati, chi si rivolgerà a te dicendoti: «Sì, mi ricordo il cavalluccio a dondolo rosso... sì, mi ricordo il letto immaginario sotto il biancospino»?

An eerie, chilling voice interrupted him to reverberate through the house. “You believe you are safe, but you will never be safe from me. My reach is limitless, my capabilities legion. Sleep fitfully and avoid the shadows, for know that I am coming for you. When I arrive, you will pay for what you did.

For all the allure of speciously stress-free suburbs, for all the grinding of city life, cities endure. And when all those diverse energies are harnessed, and those choices, private and public, cohere, and all the bargains made in a million ways every day hold up, then a city flourishes and is the most stimulating center for life, and the most precious artifact, a culture can create. Think of great cities large and small (size, as with any work of art, does not necessarily determine value) and, in addition to nodes of government, commerce, law, hospitals, libraries, and newspapers will come to mind, as will restaurants and theaters and houses of worship and museums and opera houses and galleries and universities. And so will stadia and arenas and parks. In short, once finds not simply commerce but culture, not simply work but leisure, not only negotium but otium, not simply that which ennobles but also that which perfects us. Such has forever been the ultimate purpose of a city, to mirror our higher state, not simply to shelter us from wind and rain. As with leisure, so with the city: It is the setting to make us not the best that Nature can make us, but to manifest the best we, humankind, adding Art to Nature, can make us.

Some centuries ago they had Raphael and Michael Angelo; now we have Mr. Paul Delaroche, and all because we are progressing. You brag of your Opera houses; ten Opera houses the size of yours could dance a saraband in a Roman amphitheatre. Even Mr. Martin, with his lame tiger and his poor gouty lion, as drowsy as a subscriber to the Gazette, cuts a pretty small figure by the side of a gladiator from antiquity. What are your benefit performances, lasting till two in the morning, compared with those games which lasted a hundred days, with those performances in which real ships fought real battles on a real sea; when thousands of men earnestly carved each other -- turn pale, O heroic Franconi! -- when, the sea having withdrawn, the desert appeared, with its raging tigers and lions, fearful supernumeraries that played but once; when the leading part was played by some robust Dacian or Pannonian athlete, whom it would often have been might difficult to recall at the close of the performance, whose leading lady was some splendid and hungry lioness of Numidia starved for three days? Do you not consider the clown elephant superior to Mlle. Georges? Do you believe Taglioni dances better than did Arbuscula, and Perrot better than Bathyllus? Admirable as is Bocage, I am convinced Roscius could have given him points. Galeria Coppiola played young girls' parts, when over one hundred years old; it is true that the oldest of our leading ladies is scarcely more than sixty, and that Mlle. Mars has not even progressed in that direction. The ancients had three or four thousand gods in whom they believed, and we have but one, in whom we scarcely believe. That is a strange sort of progress. Is not Jupiter worth a good deal more than Don Juan, and is he not a much greater seducer? By my faith, I know not what we have invented, or even wherein we have improved.

But the real triumph was reserved for Christine Daae, who had begun by singing a few passages from Romeo and Juliet. It was the first time that the young artist sang in this work of Gounod, which had not been transferred to the Opera and which was revived at the Opera Comique after it had been produced at the old Theatre Lyrique by Mme. Carvalho. Those who heard her say that her voice, in these passages, was seraphic; but this was nothing to the superhuman notes that she gave forth in the prison scene and the final trio in FAUST, which she sang in the place of La Carlotta, who was ill. No one had ever heard or seen anything like it. Daae revealed a new Margarita that night, a Margarita of a splendor, a radiance hitherto unsuspected. The whole house went mad, rising to its feet, shouting, cheering, clapping, while Christine sobbed and fainted in the arms of her fellow-singers and had to be carried to her dressing-room. - Chapter 2: The New Margarita, from The Phantom of the Opera

eight thousand Republicans crammed into Crosby’s Opera House for a veritable coronation of Ulysses S. Grant. To play on wartime memories, General John “Black Jack” Logan was designated to place his name in nomination. His speech was followed by a well-staged extravaganza: hats and handkerchiefs fluttered, rounds of applause rippled across the house, and a pigeon, dyed red, white, and blue, flapped through the cavernous space. As a huge ovation for his son gathered strength, Jesse Grant stood before the speaker’s platform in “mute astonishment,” said a reporter.8 Then a curtain rose to reveal huge images drawn by Thomas Nast of the Goddess of Liberty, juxtaposed with Grant. To no one’s surprise, Grant won by acclamation on the first ballot.

He bought her flowers and took her to the Timmerman Opera House down the block. He gave her a bicycle. They spent evenings riding together on the smooth macadam of Yale and Harvard streets, the picture of a happy young couple blessed with looks and money. (“White pique hats with black watered-ribbon bands and a couple of knife feathers set at the side are the latest novelty for women cyclists,” the Tribune’s society column observed.) As Emeline became more accustomed to her “wheel,” a term everyone still used even though the old and deadly huge-wheeled bicycles of the past had become thoroughly obsolete, she and Holmes took longer and longer rides and often rode along the willowed Midway to Jackson Park to watch the construction of the world’s fair, where inevitably they found themselves among thousands of other people, many of them also bicyclists

Paradoxically, the feminine soul in our culture subsists on dimes, while millions are spent to dramatize her victimized condition. Imagine what would happen if images of the victimized feminine were banned in our culture. We would lose many of our classical dramas Tamberlaine, Othello, St Joan. Opera houses would not resonate with the anguish of La Iraviata, Lucia di Lammermoor, Madam Butterfly, Anne Boleyn. Theaters would not play Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill, Samuel Beckett. Bookshelves would be depleted without Anna Karenina, The Idiot, the poetry of Robert Browning, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton. The list is endless. The cruelty of the victimization is veiled by the beauty of the art form in which the images are enshrined. Without those diaphanous veils, we have something quite different -Dallas, Dynasty, Miami Vice and ubiquitous examples of advertising where the feminine is raped by male and female alike. At the bottom of this barrel is pornography.

What happened?” he asked softly, after a moment’s silence. Heathcliff lifted his head at the same time Rose did. Her eyes were red and swollen, her cheeks streaked with tears. A piece of hay clung to her chin and stuck to her hair. She looked beautiful Achingly so. “You’re wet,” she said, her voice thick. She wasn’t impressed with his arrival, that much was clear. “I commanded the rain to stop before I left the house but it didn’t listen.” She didn’t smile at his poor attempt at humor. “Why the tears, Rosie?

My approach to training echoed how I climbed. The romance of climbing didn’t interest me. I didn’t seek harps and wings. I heard no opera up there. Instead, my mountains had teeth. The jagged edge we walked up there dragged itself across my throat, and the throats of my friends and peers. I took the mountains’ indifference to life as aggression, and fought back. I armored myself against that indifference; with training, with thinking, with attitude. I trained with friends who shared a similar approach. Our mantra was dark, but it motivated us. When we ran we breathed in rhythm—no matter the speed—and that beat had words: “They all died.” We inhaled and exhaled the great alpine epics—like the tragedy that befell Walter Bonatti’s party on the Freney Pillar—to push ourselves to a place where we would never come up short, physically. The consequences of falling short made training important. I realized early that controlling the things that I could control gave me greater freedom to address the things that I could not control. And the mountains offered those in spades.

The same thing happened with large civic clients. He and Calvert Vaux had built and refined Central Park from 1858 through 1876, but forever afterward Olmsted found himself defending the park against attempts to tinker with its grounds in ways he considered tantamount to vandalism. It wasn’t just Central Park, however. Every park seemed subject to such abuse. “Suppose,” he wrote to architect Henry Van Brunt, “that you had been commissioned to build a really grand opera house; that after the construction work had been nearly completed and your scheme of decoration fully designed you should be instructed that the building was to be used on Sundays as a Baptist Tabernacle, and that suitable place must be made for a huge organ, a pulpit and a dipping pool. Then at intervals afterwards, you should be advised that it must be so refitted and furnished that parts of it could be used for a court room, a jail, a concert hall, hotel, skating rink, for surgical cliniques, for a circus, dog show, drill room, ball room, railway station and shot tower?” That, he wrote, “is what is nearly always going on with public parks. Pardon me if I overwhelm you; it is a matter of chronic anger with me.

Close to forty thousand Germans gathered in front of Berlin’s opera house on May 10, 1933, as a parade of swastika-wearing students and beer-hall thugs carrying torches tossed books into a huge bonfire. Ordinary citizens poured forth carrying volumes looted from libraries and private homes. “Jewish intellectualism is dead,” propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, his face fiery, yelled from the podium. “The German soul can again express itself.” What happened in Germany in 1933 was not just a brutality perpetrated by thuggish leaders and abetted by ignorant mobs. It was also, as Einstein described, “the utter failure of the so-called intellectual aristocracy.” Einstein and other Jews were ousted from what had been among the world’s greatest citadels of open-minded inquiry, and those who remained did little to resist. It represented the triumph of the ilk of Philipp Lenard, Einstein’s longtime anti-Semitic baiter, who was named by Hitler to be the new chief of Aryan science. “We must recognize that it is unworthy of a German to be the intellectual follower of a Jew,” Lenard exulted that May. “Heil Hitler!” It would be a dozen years before Allied troops would fight their way in and oust him from that role.41 Le

I HATE you,” she told her sister over the speakerphone in her secure wing of Brigid and Carwyn’s house. “No, you don’t.” “I do.” “What did Murphy do?” “Nothing.”  Except kiss me in Galway and remind me that I miss him like a lost limb.  Stare at me during the opera as if he’d eat me alive in the most pleasurable way possible.  Show off his intellect, which has always been the most attractive thing about him.  “Patrick Murphy has been a complete gentleman,” she said. “Unerringly polite and respectful. Painfully welcoming.” Anne heard Mary suck on her cigarette and release a breath. “Hateful man. That would irritate the piss out of me.

The charge of heartlessness, epitomized in the remark that William H. Vanderbilt, a railroad tycoon, is said to have made to an inquiring reporter, "The public be damned," is belied by the flowering of charitable activity in the United States in the nineteenth century. Privately financed schools and colleges multiplied; foreign missionary activity exploded; nonprofit private hospitals, orphanages, and numerous other institutions sprang up like weeds. Almost every charitable or public service organization, from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to the YMCA and YWCA, from the Indian Rights Association to the Salvation Army, dates from that period. Voluntary cooperation is no less effective in organizing charitable activity than in organizing production for profit. The charitable activity was matched by a burst of cultural activity—art museums, opera houses, symphonies, museums, public libraries arose in big cities and frontier towns alike. The size of government spending is one measure of government's role. Major wars aside, government spending from 1800 to 1929 did not exceed about 12 percent of the national income. Two-thirds of that was spent by state and local governments, mostly for schools and roads. As late as 1928, federal government spending amounted to about 3 percent of the national income.

My first impression of him was that he was free spirited, clever, funny. That proved to be completely inaccurate. We left the party together and walked around for hours, lied to each other about our happy lives, ate pizza at midnight, took the Staten Island Ferry back and forth and watched the sun rise. I gave him my phone number at the dorm. By the time he finally called me, two weeks later, I’d become obsessed with him. He kept me on a long, tight leash for months—expensive meals, the occasional opera or ballet. He took my virginity at a ski lodge in Vermont on Valentine’s Day. It wasn’t a pleasurable experience, but I trusted he knew more about sex than I did, so when he rolled off and said, “That was amazing,” I believed him. He was thirty-three, worked for Fuji Bank at the World Trade Center, wore tailored suits, sent cars to pick me up at my dorm, then the sorority house sophomore year, wined and dined me, and asked for head with no shame in the back of cabs he charged to the company account. I took this as proof of his masculine value. My “sisters” all agreed; he was “suave.” And I was impressed by how much he liked talking about his emotions, something I’d never seen a man do. “My mom’s a pothead now, and that’s why I have this deep sadness.” He took frequent trips to Tokyo for work and to San Francisco to visit his twin sister. I suspected she discouraged him from dating me.

To My Favorite 17-Year-Old High School Girl Do you realize that if you had started building the Parthenon on the day you were born you would be all done in only one more year? Of course, you couldn’t have done it alone, so never mind, you’re fine just as you are. You are loved simply for being yourself. But did you know that at your age Judy Garland was pulling down $150,000 a picture, Joan of Arc was leading the French army to victory, and Blaise Pascal had cleaned up his room? No wait, I mean he had invented the calculator. Of course, there will be time for all that later in your life after you come out of your room and begin to blossom, or at least pick up all your socks. For some reason, I keep remembering that Lady Jane Grey was Queen of England when she was only fifteen, but then she was beheaded, so never mind her as a role model. A few centuries later, when he was your age, Franz Schubert was doing the dishes for his family but that did not keep him from composing two symphonies, four operas, and two complete Masses as a youngster. But of course that was in Austria at the height of romantic lyricism, not here in the suburbs of Cleveland. Frankly, who cares if Annie Oakley was a crack shot at 15 or if Maria Callas debuted as Tosca at 17? We think you are special by just being you, playing with your food and staring into space. By the way, I lied about Schubert doing the dishes, but that doesn’t mean he never helped out around the house.

In the valleys, it was already night, lamps coming on in the mossy, textured loam, the fresh-smelling darkness expanding, unfolding its foliage. The three of them drank Old Monk, watched as the black climbed all the way past their toes and their knees, the cabbage-leafed shadows reaching out and touching them on their cheeks, noses, enveloping their faces. The black climbed over the tops of their heads and on to extinguish Kachenjunga glowing a last brazen pornographic pink... each of them separately remembered how many evenings they'd spent like this... how unimaginable it was that they would soon come to an end. Here Sai had learned how music, alcohol, and friendship together could create a grand civilization. "Nothing so sweet, dear friends -" Uncle Potty would say raising his glass before he drank. There were concert halls in Europe to which Father Booty would soon return, opera houses where music molded entire audiences into a single grieving or celebrating heart, and where the applause rang like a downpour... But could they feel as they did here? Hanging over the mountain, hearts half empty-half full, longing for beauty, for innocence that now knows. With passion for the beloved or for the wide world or for worlds beyond this one... Sai thought of how it had been unclear to her what exactly she longed for in the early days at Cho Oyu, that only the longing itself found its echo in her aching soul. The longing was gone now, she thought, and the ache seemed to have found its substance.

A FAIR IMPRESSION of the pace of Roosevelt’s candidacy for Mayor may be gained by following him through one night of his campaign—Friday, 29 October.44 At 8:00 P.M., having snatched a hasty dinner near headquarters, he takes a hansom to the Grand Opera House, on Twenty-third Street and Eighth Avenue, for the first of five scheduled addresses in various parts of the city. His audience is worshipful, shabby, and exclusively black. (One of the more interesting features of the campaign has been Roosevelt’s evident appeal to, and fondness for, the black voter.) He begins by admitting that his campaign planners had not allowed for “this magnificent meeting” of colored citizens. “For the first time, therefore, since the opening of the campaign I have begun to take matters a little in my own hands!” Laughter and applause. “I like to speak to an audience of colored people,” Roosevelt says simply, “for that is only another way of saying that I am speaking to an audience of Republicans.” More applause. He reminds his listeners that he has “always stood up for the colored race,” and tells them about the time he put a black man in the chair of the Chicago Convention. Apologizing for his tight schedule, he winds up rapidly, and dashes out of the hall to a standing ovation.45 A carriage is waiting outside; the driver plies his whip; by 8:30 Roosevelt is at Concordia Hall, on Twenty-eighth Street and Avenue A. Here he shouts at a thousand well-scrubbed immigrants, “Do you want a radical reformer?” “YES WE DO!” comes the reply.46

Still, everything in their house was buffed to a high, flat shine, so much reflection to protect the fact that there was nothing underneath. They didn’t read; there were a few books, a set of encyclopedias (the wine-colored spines warmed up the den), but the only well-leafed volumes were instruction manuals, do-it-yourself how-to’s, cookbooks, and a haggard set of The Way Things Work, volumes one and two. They had no comprehension why anyone would seek out a film with an unhappy ending or buy a painting that wasn’t pretty. They owned a top-shelf stereo with speakers worth $1,000 apiece, but only a handful of easy-listening and best-of CDs: Opera Stoppers; Classical Greatest Hits. That sounds lazy, but I think it was more helpless: They didn’t know what music was for.

Maria managed to avoid Oliver for most of St. Valentine’s Day. It wasn’t difficult-apparently he spent half of it sleeping off his wild night. Not that she cared one bit. She’d learned her lesson with him. Truly she had. Not even the beautiful bouquet of irises he’d sent up to her room midafternoon changed that. Now that she was dressing for tonight’s ball, she was rather proud of herself for having only thought of him half a dozen times. Per hour, her conscience added. “There, that’s the last one,” Betty said as she tucked another ostrich feather into Maria’s elaborate coiffure. According to Celia, the new fashion this year involved a multitude of feathers drooping from one’s head in languid repose. Maria hoped hers didn’t decide to find their repose on the floor. Betty seemed to have used a magical incantation to keep them in place, and Maria wasn’t at all sure they would stay put. “You look lovely, miss,” Betty added. “If I do,” Maria said, “it’s only because of your efforts, Betty.” Betty ducked her head to hide her blush. “Thank you, miss.” It was amazing how different the servant had been ever since Maria had taken Oliver’s advice to heart, letting the girl fuss over her and tidy her room and do myriad things that Maria would have been perfectly happy to do for herself. But he’d proved to be right-Betty practically glowed with pride. Maria wished she’d known sooner how to treat them all, but honestly, how could she have guessed that these mad English would enjoy being in service? It boggled her democratic American mind. Casting an admiring glance down Maria’s gown of ivory satin, Betty said, “I daresay his lordship will swallow his tongue when he sees you tonight.” “If he does, I hope he chokes on it,” Maria muttered. With a sly glance, Betty fluffed out the bouffant drapery of white tulle that crossed Maria’s bust and was fastened in the center with an ornament of gold mosaic. “John says the master didn’t touch a one of those tarts at the brothel last night. He says that his lordship refused every female that the owner of the place brought before him.” “I somehow doubt that.” Paying her no heed, Betty continued her campaign to salvage her master’s dubious honor. “Then Lord Stoneville went to the opera house and left without a single dancer on his arm. John says he never done that before.” Maria rolled her eyes, though a part of her desperately wanted to believe it was true-a tiny, silly part of her that she would have to slap senseless. Betty polished the ornament with the edge of her sleeve. “John says he drank himself into a stupor, then came home without so much as kissing a single lady. John says-“ “John is inventing stories to excuse his master’s actions.” “Oh no, miss! John would never lie. And I can promise you that the master has never come home so early before, and certainly not without…that is, at the house in Acton he was wont to bring a tart or two home to…well, you know.” “Help him choke on his tongue?” Maria snapped as she picked up her fan. Betty laughed. “Now that would be a sight, wouldn’t it? Two ladies trying to shove his tongue down his throat.” “I’d pay them well to do it.

The Ultimate Deceit A military officer was reprimanded for faking his own death to end an affair.  Worthy of a plot in a daytime soap-opera, a Navy Commander began seeing a woman that he had met on a dating website.  The Commander neglected to tell the woman that he was married with kids.  After 6 months, the Commander grew tired of the relationship and attempted to end it by sending a fictitious e-mail to his lover – informing her that he had been killed.  The Commander then relocated to Connecticut to start a new assignment.  Upon receipt of the letter, his mistress showed up at the Commander’s house to pay her respects, only to be informed, by the new owners, of the Commander’s reassignment and new location.   The Commander received a punitive letter of reprimand, and lost his submarine command.

Yes, I'm the one who washes the plates and glasses They call me an easy woman When they give me a penny I still have to say thank you Here I am, in ragged clothes At the bottom of this shabby hotel Today, you don't know who I am Today, you don't know who I am   But one evening, one beautiful evening A big commotion People running along the shore Saying: "Look who's coming!" And me, I'll smile for the first time They'll say: "You, you're smiling now?"   A big ship A hundred cannons at the portholes Will enter the harbour!   I'll always be washing The glasses and plates I'll always be an "easy woman" When they give me a penny I'll always say thank you I'll keep my ragged clothes At the bottom of this shabby hotel And tomorrow, tomorrow like today You'll never know who I am!   But one evening, that beautiful evening for which I live Look how the cannons Wake up and turn For the first time, I'll burst out laughing "What, brat, you have the heart to laugh?"   That big ship A hundred cannons at the portholes Will bombard the harbour!   Then the sailors will come to shore More than a hundred, they'll mark with a cross of blood Every house, every door And it's before me that will be brought Enchained, imploring, mutilated and bloodied Your kind, all your kind, fine gentlemen! Your kind, all your kind, fine gentlemen!   Then the one I'm waiting for will appear, he'll say to me: "What is it that you want from all these people I'm killing?" And I'll sweetly reply: "Kill them all! For each head that falls I'll clap my hands, here we go! And that big ship, Far from the city where everything will be dead Will carry me towards life!

Come for a walk, dear. The air will do you good." Raoul thought that she would propose a stroll in the country, far from that building which he detested as a prison whose jailer he could feel walking within the walls... the jailer Erik... But she took him to the stage and made him sit on the wooden curb of a well, in the doubtful peace and coolness of a first scene set for the evening's performance. On another day, she wandered with him, hand in hand, along the deserted paths of a garden whose creepers had been cut out by a decorator's skillful hands. It was as though the real sky, the real flowers, the real earth were forbidden her for all time and she condemned to breathe no other air than that of the theatre. An occasional fireman passed, watching over their melancholy idyll from afar. And she would drag him up above the clouds, in the magnificent disorder of the grid, where she loved to make him giddy by running in front of him along the frail bridges, among the thousands of ropes fastened to the pulleys, the windlasses, the rollers, in the midst of a regular forest of yards and masts. If he hesitated, she said, with an adorable pout of her lips: "You, a sailor!" And then they returned to terra firma, that is to say, to some passage that led them to the little girls' dancing-school, where brats between six and ten were practicing their steps, in the hope of becoming great dancers one day, "covered with diamonds..." Meanwhile, Christine gave them sweets instead. She took him to the wardrobe and property-rooms, took him all over her empire, which was artificial, but immense, covering seventeen stories from the ground-floor to the roof and inhabited by an army of subjects. She moved among them like a popular queen, encouraging them in their labors, sitting down in the workshops, giving words of advice to the workmen whose hands hesitated to cut into the rich stuffs that were to clothe heroes. There were inhabitants of that country who practiced every trade. There were cobblers, there were goldsmiths. All had learned to know her and to love her, for she always interested herself in all their troubles and all their little hobbies. She knew unsuspected corners that were secretly occupied by little old couples. She knocked at their door and introduced Raoul to them as a Prince Charming who had asked for her hand; and the two of them, sitting on some worm-eaten "property," would listen to the legends of the Opera, even as, in their childhood, they had listened to the old Breton tales.

Suddenly he thought of Wick. He would be at the opera now. Helen would be there too, sitting beside him in the great nearly dark house (she’s only going because of you). The two of them would be looking at the brilliantly lighted sailing-ship scene that was the first act, and now and again one of them would lean toward the other and whisper something about the performance. Not about him; they wouldn’t be talking about him now. Chiefly because he was the only thing on their minds and neither wanted the other to know it. Helen would be wondering if he really wasn’t feeling well, or was he off again; and Wick would be wondering if Helen had accepted the excuse. She didn’t give a damn for the opera under any conditions and he certainly didn’t under these. He would be staring at the stage, half-turned toward Helen to catch her next whispered comment, and thinking: “If he isn’t there when I go back; if he’s gone out—” Don felt sorry for the distraction he knew he was causing them, and yet he couldn’t help smiling, too.

After more hours in a carriage with Archer than he ever wanted to experience again, Grey returned to Ryeton House. All he wanted to do was find Rose, climb into bed with her, and sleep for the rest of the day. Honestly, sleep. Entwine his legs with hers, sink into her arms, bury his face in the sweet warm hollow of her neck… “You coming?” Grey blinked and turned his head. He was standing in the drive with Archer and the others watching him expectantly. Archer shook his head, clearly exasperated. “Are we going inside, Your Grace, or shall we conduct our business on the street for all Mayfair to witness?” “Inside,” he mumbled. Could he be any more of an idiot? He walked toward the door, the others falling into step behind him. Archer took Bronte’s arm and led their pale, scared-looking sister into the house. Grey hadn’t had much of a chance to talk to her, to let her know that everything would be fine. She probably thought he was going to rant and rave and tell her she could never see Alexander again. Truth be told, ranting and raving was tempting. And a little fear was a small price to pay for what she’d put him through-and for thinking so ill of him to begin with. When had he ever given her reason to think him a monster?

It was the first time that I entered the house on the lake. I had often begged the “trap-door lover,” as we used to call Erik in my country, to open its mysterious doors to me. He always refused. I made very many attempts, but in vain, to obtain admittance. Watch him as I might, after I first learned that he had taken up his permanent abode at the Opera, the darkness was always too thick to enable me to see how he worked the door in the wall on the lake. One day, when I thought myself alone, I stepped into the boat and rowed toward that part of the wall through which I had seen Erik disappear. It was then that I came into contact with the siren who guarded the approach and whose charm was very nearly fatal to me. I had no sooner put off from the bank than the silence amid which I floated on the water was disturbed by a sort of whispered singing that hovered all around me. It was half breath, half music; it rose softly from the waters of the lake; and I was surrounded by it through I knew not what artifice. It followed me, moved with me and was so soft that it did not alarm me. On the contrary, in my longing to approach the source of that sweet and enticing harmony, I leaned out of my little boat over the water, for there was no doubt in my mind that the singing came from the water itself. By this time, I was alone in the boat in the middle of the lake; the voice—for it was now distinctly a voice—was beside me, on the water. I leaned over, leaned still farther. The lake was perfectly calm, and a moonbeam that passed through the air hole in the Rue Scribe showed me absolutely nothing on its surface, which was smooth and black as ink. I shook my ears to get rid of a possible humming; but I soon had to accept the fact that there was no humming in the ears so harmonious as the singing whisper that followed and now attracted me. Had I been inclined to superstition, I should have certainly thought that I had to do with some siren whose business it was to confound the traveler who should venture on the waters of the house on the lake. Fortunately, I come from a country where we are too fond of fantastic things not to know them through and through; and I had no doubt but that I was face to face with some new invention of Erik’s. But this invention was so perfect that, as I leaned out of the boat, I was impelled less by a desire to discover its trick than to enjoy its charm; and I leaned out, leaned out until I almost overturned the boat. Suddenly, two monstrous arms issued from the bosom of the waters and seized me by the neck, dragging me down to the depths with irresistible force. I should certainly have been lost, if I had not had time to give a cry by which Erik knew me. For it was he; and, instead of drowning me, as was certainly his first intention, he swam with me and laid me gently on the bank: “How imprudent you are!” he said, as he stood before me, dripping with water. “Why try to enter my house? I never invited you! I don’t want you there, nor anybody! Did you save my life only to make it unbearable to me? However great the service you rendered him, Erik may end by forgetting it; and you know that nothing can restrain Erik, not even Erik himself.” He spoke, but I had now no other wish than to know what I already called the trick of the siren. He satisfied my curiosity, for Erik, who is a real monster—I have seen him at work in Persia, alas—is also, in certain respects, a regular child, vain and self-conceited, and there is nothing he loves so much, after astonishing people, as to prove all the really miraculous ingenuity of his mind. He laughed and showed me a long reed. “It’s the silliest trick you ever saw,” he said, “but it’s very useful for breathing and singing in the water. I learned it from the Tonkin pirates, who are able to remain hidden for hours in the beds of the rivers.

In 1910 Leroux had his greatest literary success with Le Fantôme de l’Opéra (The Phantom of the Opera). This is both a detective story and a dark romantic melodrama and was inspired by Leroux’s passion for and obsession with the Paris Opera House. And there is no mystery as to why he found the building so fascinating because it is one of the architectural wonders of the nineteenth century. The opulent design and the fantastically luxurious furnishings added to its glory, making it the most famous and prestigious opera house in all Europe. The structure comprises seventeen floors, including five deep and vast cellars and sub cellars beneath the building. The size of the Paris Opera House is difficult to conceive. According to an article in Scribner’s Magazine in 1879, just after it first opened to the public, the Opera House contained 2,531 doors with 7,593 keys. There were nine vast reservoirs, with two tanks holding a total of 22,222 gallons of water. At the time there were fourteen furnaces used to provide the heating, and dressing-rooms for five hundred performers. There was a stable for a dozen or so horses which were used in the more ambitious productions. In essence then the Paris Opera House was like a very small magnificent city. During a visit there, Leroux heard the legend of a bizarre figure, thought by many to be a ghost, who had lived secretly in the cavernous labyrinth of the Opera cellars and who, apparently, engineered some terrible accidents within the theatre as though he bore it a tremendous grudge. These stories whetted Leroux’s journalistic appetite. Convinced that there was some truth behind these weird tales, he investigated further and acquired a series of accounts relating to the mysterious ‘ghost’. It was then that he decided to turn these titillating titbits of theatre gossip into a novel. The building is ideal for a dark, fantastic Grand Guignol scenario. It is believed that during the construction of the Opera House it became necessary to pump underground water away from the foundation pit of the building, thus creating a huge subterranean lake which inspired Leroux to use it as one of his settings, the lair, in fact, of the Phantom. With its extraordinary maze-like structure, the various stage devices primed for magical stage effects and that remarkable subterranean lake, the Opera House is not only the ideal backdrop for this romantic fantasy but it also emerges as one of the main characters of this compelling tale. In using the real Opera House as its setting, Leroux was able to enhance the overall sense of realism in his novel.

Why did you come here tonight?” she asked. “Other than the fact that you’ve finally come to your senses and realize you love me.” Chuckling, Grey reached up and untied the ribbons that held her mask. The pretty silk fell away to reveal the beautiful face beneath. “I missed you,” he replied honestly. “And you were right-about everything. I’m tired of drifting through life. I want to live again-with you.” A lone tear trickled down her cheek. “I think that might be the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me.” He grinned. “I have more.” She pressed her fingers to his lips. “I’m tired of talking.” She kissed him, teasing his lips with the ripe curves of hers, sliding her tongue inside to rub against his in a sensual rhythm that had him fisting his hands in her skirts. By the time they reached Mayfair, Grey’s hair was mussed, Rose’s skirts crushed, and he was harder than an oratory competition for mutes. “I can’t believe you came,” she told him as the entered the house, arms wrapped around each other. “I’m so proud of you.” “I wouldn’t have done it without you.” She shook her head. “You did it for yourself not for me.” Perhaps that was true, and perhaps it wasn’t. He had no interest in discussing it tonight. “It’s just the beginning,” he promised. “I’m going to go wherever you want to go from now on. Within reason.” She laughed. “Of course. We can’t have you attending a musicale just to please me, can we?” She gazed up at him. “You know, I think I’m going to want to spend plenty of evenings at home as well. That time I spent out of society had some very soothing moments.” “Of course,” he agreed, thinking about all the things they could do to one another at home. Alone. “There has to be moderation.” Upstairs in their bedroom, he undressed her, unbuttoning each tiny button one by one until she sighed in exasperation. “In a hurry?” he teased. His wife got her revenge, when clad only in her chemise and stockings, she turned those nimble fingers of hers to his cravat, working the knot so slowly he thought he might go mad. She worsened the torment by slowly rubbing her hips against his thigh. His cock was so rigid he could hang clothes on it, and the need to bury himself inside her consumed him. Still, a skilled lover knows when to have patience-and a man in love knows that his woman’s pleasure comes far, far before his own. So, as ready as he was, Grey was in no hurry to let this night end, not when it might prove to be the best of his new-found life. Wearing only his trousers, he took Rose’s hand and led her to their bed. He climbed onto the mattress and pulled her down beside him, lying so that they were face-to-face. Warm fingers came up to gently touch the scar that ran down his face. Odd, but he hadn’t thought of it at all that evening. In fact, he’d almost forgot about it. “I heard you that night,” he admitted. “When you told me you loved me.” Her head tilted. “I thought you were asleep.” “No.” He held her gaze as he raised his own hand to brush the softness of her cheek. “I should have said it then, but I love you too, Rose. So much.” Her smile was smug. “I know.” She kissed him again. “Make love to me.” His entire body pulsed. “I intend to, but there’s one thing I have to do first.” Rose frowned. “What’s that?” Grey pulled the brand-new copy of Voluptuous from beneath the pillow where he’d hidden it before going to the ball. “There’s a story in here that I want to read to you.

Let’s go home,” she said. He arched his brows. “Already? I thought you would want to stay for a while.” Dark eyes flashed. “No, I want to take you home where women can’t stare at you like hyenas after a baby chick.” He laughed-loudly, which caught a fair bit of attention. “Surely I’m more threatening than a chick?” She smiled, ruining her petulant expression. “A puppy perhaps.” Grey stepped closer so that their torsos touched. It was totally improper behavior, but the gossips already had so much to talk about, one more thing would hardly matter. “Is that all you want to take me home for? To protect me?” Her gaze turned coy. “I received the newest edition of Voluptuous today. I thought I might read to you.” Was it just him or had the temperature in the room suddenly climbed ten degrees. “Let’s go.” He grabbed her by the hand and started weaving their way toward the door. People stopped hi to say hello, and he was forced to speak to them rather than be as rude as he wanted. A good fifteen minutes passed before he and Rose finally made it to the entrance of the ballroom, only to have Vienne La Rieux descend upon them. “Monsieur et Madame le Duc!” she cried, clasping her hands together in front of her breast-abundantly displayed above a peacock-colored gown that must have cost a small fortune. “Finally, you leave my club together, non?” Grey winked at her. “At last, madam. But we may want a room again someday.” The French woman grinned, delighting in Rose’s obvious embarrassment. “Mais oui! An anniversary present, Your Grace. On the house.” He thanked her and bade her farewell. “She knew?” Rose’s tone was incredulous as they made their way closer to the exit. “How could she know?” Grey shrugged. “The woman seems to know deuced near everything that happens here.

The Comte de Chagny was right; no gala performance ever equalled this one. All the great composers of the day had conducted their own works in turns. Faure and Krauss had sung; and on that evening, Christine Daaé had revealed her true self, for the first time, to the astonished and and enthusiastic audience. Gounod had conducted the Funeral March of a Marionette; Reyer, his beautiful overture to Siguar; Saint Saëns, the Danse Macabre and a Rêverie Orientale, Massenet, an unpublished Hungarian march; Guiraud, his Carnaval; Delibes, the Valse lente from Sylvia and the Pizzicati from Coppelia. Mlle. Krauss had sung the bolero in the Vespri Siciliani; and Mlle. Denise Bloch the drinking song in Lucrezia Borgia. But the real triumph was reserved for Christine Daaé, who had begun by singing a few passages from Romeo and Juliet. It was the first time that the young artist sang in this work of Gounod, which had not been transferred to the Opera and which was revived at the the old Theatre Lyrique by Mme. Carvalho. Those who heard her say that her voice, in these passages, was seraphic; but this was nothing to the superhuman notes that she gave forth in the prison scene and the final trio in Faust, which she sang in the place of La Carlotta, who was ill. No one had ever heard or seen anything like it. Daaé revealed a new Margarita that night, a Margarita of a splendor, a radiance hitherto unsuspected. The whole house went mad, rising to it its feet, shouting, cheering, clapping, while Christine sobbed and fainted in the arms of her fellow-singers and had to be carried to her dressing-room. A few subscribers, however, protested. Why had so great a treasure been kept from them all that time? Till then, Christine Daaé had played a good Siebel to Carlotta's rather too splendidly material Margarita. And it had needed Carlotta's incomprehensible and inexcusable absence from this gala night for the little Daaé, at a moment's warning, to show all that she could do in a part of the programme reserved for the Spanish diva! Well, what the subscribers wanted to know was, why had Debienne and Poligny applied to Daaé, when Carlotta was taken ill? Did they know of her hidden genius? And, if they knew of it, why had they kept it hidden? And why had she kept it hidden? Oddly enough, she was not known to have a professor of singing at that moment. She had often said she meant to practice alone for the future. The whole thing was a mystery.

HE DO THE POLICE IN DIFFERENT VOICES: Part I THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD First we had a couple of feelers down at Tom's place, There was old Tom, boiled to the eyes, blind, (Don't you remember that time after a dance, Top hats and all, we and Silk Hat Harry, And old Tom took us behind, brought out a bottle of fizz, With old Jane, Tom's wife; and we got Joe to sing 'I'm proud of all the Irish blood that's in me, 'There's not a man can say a word agin me'). Then we had dinner in good form, and a couple of Bengal lights. When we got into the show, up in Row A, I tried to put my foot in the drum, and didn't the girl squeal, She never did take to me, a nice guy - but rough; The next thing we were out in the street, Oh it was cold! When will you be good? Blew in to the Opera Exchange, Sopped up some gin, sat in to the cork game, Mr. Fay was there, singing 'The Maid of the Mill'; Then we thought we'd breeze along and take a walk. Then we lost Steve. ('I turned up an hour later down at Myrtle's place. What d'y' mean, she says, at two o'clock in the morning, I'm not in business here for guys like you; We've only had a raid last week, I've been warned twice. Sergeant, I said, I've kept a decent house for twenty years, she says, There's three gents from the Buckingham Club upstairs now, I'm going to retire and live on a farm, she says, There's no money in it now, what with the damage don, And the reputation the place gets, on account off of a few bar-flies, I've kept a clean house for twenty years, she says, And the gents from the Buckingham Club know they're safe here; You was well introduced, but this is the last of you. Get me a woman, I said; you're too drunk, she said, But she gave me a bed, and a bath, and ham and eggs, And now you go get a shave, she said; I had a good laugh, couple of laughs (?) Myrtle was always a good sport'). treated me white. We'd just gone up the alley, a fly cop came along, Looking for trouble; committing a nuisance, he said, You come on to the station. I'm sorry, I said, It's no use being sorry, he said; let me get my hat, I said. Well by a stroke of luck who came by but Mr. Donovan. What's this, officer. You're new on this beat, aint you? I thought so. You know who I am? Yes, I do, Said the fresh cop, very peevish. Then let it alone, These gents are particular friends of mine. - Wasn't it luck? Then we went to the German Club, Us We and Mr. Donovan and his friend Joe Leahy, Heinie Gus Krutzsch Found it shut. I want to get home, said the cabman, We all go the same way home, said Mr. Donovan, Cheer up, Trixie and Stella; and put his foot through the window. The next I know the old cab was hauled up on the avenue, And the cabman and little Ben Levin the tailor, The one who read George Meredith, Were running a hundred yards on a bet, And Mr. Donovan holding the watch. So I got out to see the sunrise, and walked home. * * * * April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land....

One day, because I was bored in our usual spot, next to the merry-go-round, Françoise had taken me on an excursion – beyond the frontier guarded at equal intervals by the little bastions of the barley-sugar sellers – into those neighbouring but foreign regions where the faces are unfamiliar, where the goat cart passes; then she had gone back to get her things from her chair, which stood with its back to a clump of laurels; as I waited for her, I was trampling the broad lawn, sparse and shorn, yellowed by the sun, at the far end of which a statue stands above the pool, when, from the path, addressing a little girl with red hair playing with a shuttlecock in front of the basin, another girl, while putting on her cloak and stowing her racket, shouted to her, in a sharp voice: ‘Good-bye, Gilberte, I’m going home, don’t forget we’re coming to your house tonight after dinner.’ That name, Gilberte, passed by close to me, evoking all the more forcefully the existence of the girl it designated in that it did not merely name her as an absent person to whom one is referring, but hailed her directly; thus it passed close by me, in action so to speak, with a power that increased with the curve of its trajectory and the approach of its goal; – transporting along with it, I felt, the knowledge, the notions about the girl to whom it was addressed, that belonged not to me, but to the friend who was calling her, everything that, as she uttered it, she could see again or at least held in her memory, of their daily companionship, of the visits they paid to each other, and all that unknown experience which was even more inaccessible and painful to me because conversely it was so familiar and so tractable to that happy girl who grazed me with it without my being able to penetrate it and hurled it up in the air in a shout; – letting float in the air the delicious emanation it had already, by touching them precisely, released from several invisible points in the life of Mlle Swann, from the evening to come, such as it might be, after dinner, at her house; – forming, in its celestial passage among the children and maids, a little cloud of precious colour, like that which, curling over a lovely garden by Poussin,15 reflects minutely like a cloud in an opera, full of horses and chariots, some manifestation of the life of the gods; – casting finally, on that bald grass, at the spot where it was at once a patch of withered lawn and a moment in the afternoon of the blonde shuttlecock player (who did not stop launching the shuttlecock and catching it again until a governess wearing a blue ostrich feather called her), a marvellous little band the colour of heliotrope as impalpable as a reflection and laid down like a carpet over which I did not tire of walking back and forth with lingering, nostalgic and desecrating steps, while Françoise cried out to me: ‘Come on now, button up your coat and let’s make ourselves scarce’, and I noticed for the first time with irritation that she had a vulgar way of speaking, and alas, no blue feather in her hat.