Last night was two events:

Accompanying - I played for my double bass friend. It went quite well. There was a rocky start at our first rehearsal, which was in the same hour as our first playing for his prof. The prof was quite apprehensive, suffice it to say, he was very happy with how things improved in a few days time.

Side note, I picked up some more accompanying work. I will be playing for a visiting Erhuist. The Erhu is the Chinese violin type instrument; it is a wonderful instrument and I'm excited to get to play for it!

I was most impressed with the Opera last night. From the very first notes, I was impressed with even the calibre of the orchestra. [Side note, a fairly large orchestra can fit in the pit, so I know that there will be no practical problems with that for my dance piece thesis.]
The calibre of singing was varied, but generally very high. My friend Judy was singing one of the leads - it was wonderful to hear her singing so beautifully!
Generally, the opera itself is delightful in a dark kind of way.
If I had to point out a weakness, it would be the acting element of the show. It's not a true opera, because lots of the dialogue was spoken, and it showed that the Opera specialists are just not used to delivering dialogue unless they are singing it. Nevertheless, I thought some of the smaller role characters did a spectacular job at bringing out the 'characters' even in non-spoken/sung aspects.
In the end, any weaknesses were overshadowed by the strength of the cast/musicians. I'm very glad to have gone.
For student-opera, I can't really compare this to anything, because I've only seen students doing opera either in the chorus of professional stuff, or in excerpts. While I might say that some scenes could have been tighter (in comparison to the calibre of some scenes I've seen), I have a great respect for the work that everyone did to bring a whole opera to the stage, and to life.

Tonight, I'm going to the school to work on Electroacoustic stuff. I've been putting it on the back burner for a while now, and it's time to get on top of it. I have a lot to get done tonight, I hope I can get to all of it.

Tomorrow, we're leaving early to get to Toronto in time to meet a friend for lunch before going to the Tapestry New Opera Works show.

OOh OOh
Newsflash!
I'm back to knitting.
I seem to have more time now that the piano trio is done. While I may not actually have as much time as I think, I've been taking that time to knit. I'll put pics up later, but I knit a pig that I shall name Pigette, and I'm knitting a Penguin! They are both stuffed toys, the pig turned out quite well. I am stuffing them with plastic bags, because we have acquired SO many of them, and this seems as good a use as any for them.