Mirror, mirror, and she froze like stone

And today I woke up with a lightly scratchy throat that I figured was normal variation in humidity or not drinking enough, except by midafternoon it had turned into the feeling of someone using a cheesewire on my tonsils; so much for any evening plans, although I suppose it's just as well that I had to bow out of spending this weekend with schreibergasse. I made brownies to cheer myself up. Somehow they ended up this complex thing with condensed milk substituted for half the butter and sugar, tart cherries and a glaze of cherry jam, and whipped cream because it seemed like a good idea. I'm waiting to find out what kind of torte I just reverse-engineered—I have this sneaking feeling I should just have dumped it full of kirsch and claimed it was intentional.

Tomorrow, unless some kind of technological stupidity interferes, I am getting up at a completely normal (read, bizarrely early) hour to watch the Glyndebourne Festival's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg streaming at the Guardian. It struck me rather after the fact that I should maybe have gotten hold of a libretto, but that's what the internet is for, when you're not using it to watch opera in another time zone.

I need to get hold of the revival cast recording of Assassins. I heard "The Ballad of Guiteau" on Standing Room Only this afternoon; I very much doubt that I will prefer their Booth or Czolgosz to Victor Garber and Terrence Mann, but Neil Patrick Harris and Denis O'Hare make a formidable Balladeer and Guiteau. I am fond of both actors, even if I'm not actually going to start watching How I Met Your Mother or True Blood.

This is the sort of photograph I wanted to post yesterday:

Nürnbergs teurem Sachs

Well, as far as first experiences of Wagner go, that was pretty awesome. I even got the high-resolution stream to work after the first act. Gerard Finley: why have I not heard of? (Apparently I would have if I'd been able to get tickets to Doctor Atomic at the Met in 2008.) Johannes Martin Kränzle: would watch sing his way out of a paper bag. (Which is pretty much happens to Beckmesser in the third act, Malvolio-funny.) What a much more complicated opera than I was expecting. I may attempt to write it up, but first I have to start making Ethiopian collard greens from a recipe I got off the internet. I wish there would be a professionally available recording, but right now I'll settle for being glad—for once—that even if I was in the wrong country for a production, it didn't matter.