UBC Opera with Donna on Sunday afternoon

There was a brochure one day at our mailboxes and I had heard someone mention the UBC Opera so I suggested to Donna that we go to this performance of two one act operas by Puccini " Il Tabarro" and "Gianni Schicchi"...the first one very dramatic and tragic and the second one an "opera bouffe"...comedy.  I hadn't heard of either of them.  In the second one the very well known aria, "O mio babbino caro" was sung.  This aria is so everywhere that Donna and I thought Puccini must have used it in another opera but it doesn't seem like that's the case.  I guess it's just sung so much and in so many aria collections by various sopranos.

Lesley Garret does this in Pisa in this YouTube video and I know she performed it in Harrogate, Yorkshire when we saw her.  Funny how one thing leads to another. I was in A & B Sound in Victoria many years ago and they were playing a CD of Lesley Garret. I hadn't heard of her but loved the music so asked what it was and bought it. Jim and I listened to it a lot. She was the singer on the British Airways commercials so probably a lot of you have heard her.

 Years later when we were doing a house/car exchange in Harrogate, our exchange partners noticed this CD in our collection and phoned us to say she was appearing in the Harrogate Festival. We immediately bought tickets. She was wonderful and was a "Yorkshire Lass". It was funny to hear her using a broad Yorkshire accent when she addressed her hometown audience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCbnd4vwrEA

We thoroughly enjoyed the performance and it was most interesting to be in the Old Auditorium at UBC which has been completely restored. We even visited the basement where the old cafeteria was...what students used to call "The Armpit".  It was pretty grubby even by student standards. The new version is unrecognizable.  A big lineup for wine but no famous UBC cinnamon buns:)

The orchestra pit