A night at the opera...

Yesterday evening my husband and I went to see the operette "La Grande-Duchesse de Gerolstein" - and we loved it!  It was funny and sarcastic and the music was very enjoyable - lots of military marching music.  Here is a video (from another production of this opera I found on Youtube) of one of the arias that I couldn't get out of my head when we were walking home afterwards:

The Duchess is in love with the soldier she gives her father's sabre to - she promotes him from a simple soldier to a general, which infuriates the real general.  The young girl at the end of the video is the solider's fiance.  When the soldier chooses his fiance over the Duchess, she turns on him and plots to kill him.  The whole thing is a farce and a satirical critique of the excesses of power - very appropriate these days with the way leaders have been mismanaging countries and abusing power all over the world...so you see that things haven't changed that much since Offenbach composed it in the 1860's!   In any case, it was an entertaining way to spend a Saturday evening! 

Now it's Sunday morning, and today will be all about baking Christmas cookies and keeping my studying kids focused on their books...  but first I need to get myself out for a run while it's not raining/snowing too hard. 

Update: I got out for a quick 30 minute run - in the SNOW!!!  It was snowing big wet flakes and so I ran to the Finnish track because I thought it would be pretty to see the snow through the trees - and it was.  And the Finnish track was suprisingly dry - it must have really good drainage.  I ended up doing 4.5 km altogether, short for a Sunday, but the right numbers in honor of my brother-in-law Mark's 45th birthday today - he was thinking of running his age in kilometers, I wonder if he did it???  Happy Birthday, Mark, no matter what you ran!

Have a happy Sunday!