In the meantime, there are several other great ways to see/hear the Met, even if you live on the Left Coast, as we do. Check them out at the Met’s website.

My girls just came back from a trip to our old stomping grounds in Salem—a five hour drive each way—gushing about a version of Puccini’s incomparable Nessun Dorma they’d been listening to en route on Maire’s iPod. The song was sung by—wait for it—Michael Bolton!

Granted, my all-time favorite version will likely always be Placido Domingo’s, in the Zefirelli production at the Met in the 1990s, conducted by James Levine—yes, yes, even over Pavarotti, who can otherwise hit those high Cs better than Domingo; but goodness, that Bolton has a nice set of pipes, too!
Click here to view the embedded video.

John’s latest is a review of Ron Hansen’s most recent book, Exiles, a novelistic retelling of the intersecting stories of poet Gerard Manley Hopkins and the six Carmelite nuns whose deaths aboard the Deutschland inspired one of the greatest poems in the English language.

Ron Hansen is a treasure. I’m delighted to see that other treasure, GodSpy, bringing his work to the attention of Catholic readers and once again opening up great topics for Catholic conversation.