Change of Seasons

Usually there's an overlap between the end of the racing season and the beginning of the concert season. This year my first concert was to be a nearby Boston Artists Ensemble chamber music performance on September 21, followed by Race Committee duty during the day on the 22nd, followed by a concert opera performance that evening. But the racing scheduled for September 22 and 29 was canceled (I was not scheduled to serve on the 29th,), with the result that my last Race Committee duty was on September 13 — a race which ultimately had to be abandoned because there wasn't enough wind for the boats to get around the course. So there was an eight day gap between Race Committee service and concert going.

I attended a Handel and Haydn performance on Sunday, September 30. My first Boston Symphony concert will be on October 11, and my first Harvard Musical Association concert will be the next evening. There are another thirty-two events on my concert calendar after that, with the last one coming on May 2, 2019 — well before the first racing event. It all adds up to thirty-six events spread over thirty-three weeks, and thirty-one of them require trekking in to Boston. Fourteen concerts are BSO, eleven HMA, five Boston Artists Ensemble nearby, four H+H, and two opera. It's possible I could add BSO, H+H, and opera performances, and that I could skip some BSO or HMA concerts if I am under the weather literally or figuratively.

Later this month there will be a Race Committee Appreciation Party, but I don't count it as part of the sailing season, nor do I consider that the season begins for me when the club opens in April with a flag-raising event which committee members attend in uniform. For me, the season is when I am helping run sailboat races. This year I had fourteen times on duty over twelve weeks.

Another change of seasons occurred on September 29, Michaelmas, when I switched from straw to felt hats. Straw hats will return, as always, on Memorial Day.

Christmas — Days 7-12 and Beyond

There's not much to report about days 7-12 of Christmas. We had lobster on New Year's Eve and beef tenderloin on New Year's Day. A $9 bottle of Spanish bubbly accompanied the steak to toast the new year.

I saw the movie "Flight" at the Cabot Street Cinema. It stars Denzel Washington as the alcoholic, cocaine-sniffing pilot who wile drunk manages to pull a plane out of an uncontrolled dive and crash land it with only six lives lost when it seemed that all aboard would be killed. The NTSB investigates. Good movie. Spoiler: he ends up in prison after he admits to being drunk. IMO, if flying drunk is a crime, he deserved it, but if it's for the deaths, he didn't since he saved 90 others who would also have died.

Friday I went to a recital at the Harvard Musical Association. Each year they have a competition for outstanding high school age musicians and the winner gives a recital at the association's "clubhouse." This year there were two winners, a cellist and a fl(a)utist, both of Korean extraction. They both performed very well. I had dinner at Scollay Square beforehand. Wendy the waitress was back — the one who is familiar with classical music. That was nice.

Even though it's after the 12 days, the Catholic Church  is still celebrating Christmas until Sunday. We extend it until the Sunday which falls on January 7-13. (Any excuse for a party: Catholics have all the fun!) So I decided to have some oysters. When my uncle was alive, he always wanted scallopped oysters on Christmas, but I wasn't able to squeeze them in when my brother, who won't eat them, was here. I got a pint and tried to fry half of them in olive oil, lamb fat, and butter on Wednesday. Unfortunately, the coating didn't stay on them and crisp up. Instead it blended with the fat to make a sort of gravy. It tasted okay, but it wasn't what I had been hoping for. And it's a wonder I didn't suffer a myocardial infarction from ingesting the lamb fat. Today, I was more successful with oyster stew. A tablespoon of butter, tablespoon of flour, 1/3 cup of water, 1 cup of milk, 14 oysters, 1/3 cup oyster liquor, 1/3 cup heavy cream in that order on the stovetop. Along the way I added pinches of nutmeg, chervil, pepper, mild paprika, celery seed, onion salt and sea salt. Half was lunch today, and half will be  lunch tomorrow. It's good, though I say it myself.

This has turned into a musical week for me. Wednesday evening I went to the HD movie theater retransmission of "Un Ballo in Maschera" from the Metropolitan Opera. It's got great music, and it was very well sung. Thursday evening, the Boston Symphony was back after their Christmas break. I'll write a bit about that on my music blog when I get around to it. And tonight there's another performance at the HMA — grownups this time, a string quartet. If I'm lucky "Tommy Kirk" will be my waiter at Scollay Square.

My Barber Puts Me to Shame — and Other Stuff

My Barber. Maybe the first part of the title is elitist, but it's what I was thinking as I walked home from the barber shop on Thursday. He started me off with a little joke which it took me a minute to got. I usually wait two or three months between haircuts, so my hair was getting pretty long. He said I needed a haircut or a violin.

While he cut my hair we started blandly by talking about the weather. When I mentioned the snow in Rome, that led to some conversation about place in Italy we'd like to visit. He said he had never got to Rome: his only time in Italy was many years ago when he was in the Navy and his ship went to Naples. But he had liked it when they went to Holland, and he had a week in Amsterdam. At that point I was thinking sailor+Amsterdam=visits to prostitutes. But before I could come up with a bland comment or question, he said he had loved visiting the Rijksmuseum and being able to stand in front of "The Night Watch."

That led me to ask if he had been to the exhibition of Dutch paintings at the Peabody Essex Museum. Well, he had been six times! (I went twice.) After he had seen the whole exhibit, he went back and looked more carefully at some of the specific paintings. So I mentioned that I had seen a movie at Cabot Street Cinema. "The Mill and the Cross?" he asked. He gets their tabloid fliers and wishes he could get there more often, but the performance schedule is difficult for him. OTOH, he has an opportunity to buy a DVD of the movies for $25. We talked about it for a bit. He also told me that he was taking a course in art appreciation, and I said I thought the movie would fit in with it very well, and he said my enthusiasm for it was inclining him to buy it.

Next he mentioned that he often spent a half hour on the art course before he came to work. This called The Teaching Company to mind, and, sure enough, they produced the course. He has maybe six of the courses, and he really likes them. (I've bought a lot of their courses, but, unlike him, I haven't taken the time to watch most of them. It's like my unread books.)

Edited to add: At some point the discussion turned to music. He was of the opinion that Bach is the greatest of the Baroque composers. I commented that when I was a boy, I knew that my dad liked Bach, but I didn't care for Bach that much. While I didn't want to say exactly that Bach is an acquired taste, the fact is that at some point something clicked, and I could really appreciate Bach. Similarly, in the 1980's I could agree with a colleague at work that the Bach cantatas played every Sunday morning on WGBH were "lugubrious" at some point something clicked, and now I appreciate them.

Finally we turned to language study. It's fascinating for him watching his 2-3 year old granddaughter learn English, and he thinks immersion is the best way to learn a language. He has got to a point with his German that he almost never needs a dictionary when he reads the German "Readers' Digest." (I dabble in languages, and maybe have gotten beyond beginner stage with German, but I've never achieved that degree of proficiency since I studied French and Latin in school.)

As I paid, he commented that he had really enjoyed talking with me — he could never have such a conversation with most customers. As I reflected on it, I realized that he was pursuing his interests much more deeply than I do, and, without a university degree, is a truly educated man.


Other Stuff.  I went to three musical events in Boston this week: an opera on Wednesday, a symphony concert on Thursday, and a chamber music concert and social evening at the Harvard Musical Association on Friday.

Continuation: The opera was interesting, and I wish I had a chance to go back and hear it again to pick up on details I think I missed first time around. The symphony was good, but unexciting. See my music blog for a bit more about the symphony concert.

Friday evening I went to Scollay Square. Natalia was my waitress, and she did a good job, but, unlike Wendy on my previous visit there, she showed no interest in my book or in having any real conversation. But after a while, three people arrived and sat at a table to my left: a middle aged man and woman, and a blond teenaged boy in a short-sleeved T shirt. At first I was sorry I hadn't sat somewhere where I could see him without turning my head, but eventually I decided it was a good thing, because I might have stared at him too obviously if I had had a direct view. We left at the same time, and I noticed that the boy had a skateboard.

The concert was an interesting one. The musicians were the Leipzig Quartet and the first half of the concert was an adaptation of something they have done in Germany based on Thomas Mann's novel Doctor Faustus. They perform pieces which they find somehow related to the main character of the novel, Adrian Leverkühn, a composer who sells his soul to the devil to become even greater than Beethoven. Between each piece they play, there is a reading of part of the dialogue between Leverkühn and the devil. The program notes explained that Mann intended this as an allegory about Germany under Hitler, which sold its soul to the devil for the sake of empire. I thought, based on the notes, that the book would be worth reading, but the conversation between the two was so wordy and abstract that it killed any interest in reading the book. (But too bad Mann hadn't had the foresight to write it in the 1920's, before Germany made the final pact with the devil, rather than in the 1940's, when it no longer could serve as a warning, but only as a lamentation.)

As I was on my way to Boston, I somehow came to think of the phrase, "soak an eye," and I realized that it fits the scene in "Casablanca" where Rick brushes aside Sam's reluctance to play "As Time Goes By." Rick tells Sam, "If she can stand it, soak an eye."*

* If I'm being too vague about this, just ask, and I'll be happy to explain. But just read it aloud, and it'll probably make sense.

In My Life (Early February 2012)

No burnt Velveeta this time. I've been fairly busy, but a lot of it has to do with things that I can't talk about because it could blow my cover. But that still leaves enough for a decent post.

On Wednesday I went to the Cabot Street Cinema to see "The Mill and the Cross," a movie (or should I call it "a film"?) about a painting titled "The Way to Calvary" by 16th Century Flemish painter Pieter Breugel the Elder. The painting shows a moment in Jesus' way to Calvary, the moment when Simon of Cyrene is forced to help Jesus carry the cross. Breugel has set the event in a landscape populated by numerous 16th century people going about their business — a landscape dominated by a fantastically placed windmill on the top of a rock spire. The movie goes Breugel one better and brings us into the daily lives of the miller and his family, the artist and his family, the artist's patron, and many of the others depicted in the painting. It imagines the effect wrought on all of these by the policies of Spain toward Flanders, which was then under Spanish rule. Strikingly, in all of this, it indicates that for most of the people on the scene, Jesus is not a focal figure: even those who are looking at what is happening with him are paying more attention to Simon. Hmm. Is that how it was at Jesus' time, in the 16th Century, and today? Does Breugel show us the truth about people? Anyway, it was an interesting film, and it fits well under their motto: "Films Worth Seeing More Than Once." If they bring it back, I'll try to see it again, because I think there is more to appreciate than I was able to get in one viewing.

Then on Friday I trekked into Boston for the play "God of Carnage" at the Huntington Theatre [sic] Company. It's by a French playwright, Yasmina Reza, and it's billed as a comedy, even though she says she regard her plays as comic tragedies. It's about two sets of parents who meet to discuss an incident in which the 11 year old son of one couple broke two teeth of the other couple's 11 year old son in a fight. It starts out civilized but deteriorates badly, with "alliances" among the participants forming and dissolving. I laughed! I didn't cry! The play's run has ended, but a movie has been made, titled simply "Carnage." It has different actors, and I gather it differs in some details, but if you're interested, you can catch it in a theater near you.

This afternoon, I had thought I would attend a performance of "Brighton Beach Memoirs", but I got distracted by the Boston Symphony rebroadcast, and it slipped my mind. Oh well.

In the week to come, I have three musical events in Boston: the opera "The Lighthouse" on Wednesday, the Boston Symphony concert on Thursday, and a Harvard Musical Association social evening, including a chamber music concert, on Friday. The opera is based on an event in 1900 when a supply ship came to a lighthouse on an island off the coast of Scotland and found that the three keepers had vanished. The BSO is giving a Beethoven piano concerto and a Rachmaninoff symphony. The HMA evening will have the Leipzig String Quartet performing music related to Thomas Mann's novel Dr. Faustus. I'll probably have dinner at Scollay Square that evening. Time permitting, I may also go to one of the Wednesday daytime screenings of "Melancholia" at Cabot Street.

Sometime this week I should stop by the garage and have them put some brake fluid in my car. The "brake" light in my instrument panel lights up occasionally, and the mechanic said it's probably from low fluid when I met him by chance at the sandwich shop. Also, I may need new wiper (or wipre, in the British Commonwealth) blades.

Spider in My Bathroom; Other Stuff

Spider in My Bathroom.  A while back, maybe two weeks ago or a bit less, I noticed a spider in my bathroom. It was a type I have seen before. Usually they have been outdoors, and they build fairly large webs between a shrub and the house, or some such thing. They are two-colored: light brown and dark, with the colors forming stripes on their legs. They are usually fairly large, an inch or more from one foot to the opposite one.

I was surprised to see one indoors, and I hoped it would be able to get enough nourishment indoors, as I haven't seen many flying insects recently. At first I thought maybe I should capture it, using the glass and card trick, and put it outdoors where it would be in its natural habitat. But I also realize that most of my attempts to rescue spiders end badly, and I was afraid that too much of its web would be left behind. So I decided to let it be where it was.

The spider shifted from one corner to another of the room from day to day, mostly in the corner by the sink or in the corner over the shower head. But for several days now it has stayed in the shower corner. After a while, I decided that leaving the bathroom light on might help attract insects for it. Although I sometimes forget and turn it off as I leave, this may have something to do with the spider's setting up away from the fluorescent lights by the sink.

My other concern was whether taking a shower would cause a problem for the spider. Fortunately it builds its web just below the ceiling. Even so, it does move around a bit when the shower starts, but it stays with the web. So the humidity and maybe some fine spray provoke a reaction, but they don't seem to create a real problem, and there seems to be no danger of its getting drowned or otherwise harmed.

Other Stuff.  Tomorrow, that is Saturday, is my last time helping to run sailboat races for this year. The season will be essentially over after that. On Sunday my brother and I will go to Boston for the first concert of the season of the Handel and Haydn Society. I don't recall a year when one started the day after the other ended. Usually there is a week or two between the last race and the first concert. But I don't think I've gone to the H&H season opener before, and if I weren't doing that, I would have the usual hiatus between the two seasons.

I'll be going to the usual Boston Symphony and Harvard Musical Association concerts, as well as several H&H performances. Today, I finally got around to subscribing for the four operas which Boston Lyric Opera will be presenting. Sometime, I also want to decide which, if any, of the Opera Boston shows I'll go to.

You may recall that a year ago I went to a performance of "The Laramie Project," followed by the newly written "The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later." I blogged about it at the time. So far, I haven't decided which, if any, of the shows I'll go to this year which are being presented by the organization that brought "Laramie" to Boston, but I hope to find some to attend. Also, there is a favorably reviewed "Candide" being given next week. I'll see if I can find an evening to go to that, but it won't be easy— I already have evening events on my calendar for Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. I'm also toying with the idea of going to the Friday opening night of the BSO. Apparently they're having trouble selling tickets, and they're offering a $50 discount to people who have subscriptions to later series.

And here's something you don't need to be around Boston for. The Metropolitan Opera season is also about to begin, and with it their occasional live HD transmissions to movie theaters around the world. I'm definitely hoping to get to the first one, "Anna Bolena" (Anne Boleyn) by Donizetti, the guy who gave us the mad scene in "Lucia di Lammermoor" (along with the rest of the opera). There are several others later in the season that I'd also like to hear — most of  them, actually, but some more than others. Gay guys are "supposed to" like opera, so, if you haven't already gotten hooked, why not check out the schedule and try a few. There are different styles of music represented, and if you don't like some, you might enjoy others.

Music Post

Usually I put stuff having to do with music on my music blog. But this is so good, IMO, that I can't refrain from giving a link to it here.

Moderate Fundamentalist; A Night at the Opera

Moderate Fundamentalist
Moderate Fundamentalist has pointed out that he has another blog, titled Ecce Homo (Latin for "Behold the man," the words of Pontius Pilate when he brought Jesus out to the crowd in the Gospel of John). This is more concerned with religious matters than the other one. Often the subject also has something to do with homosexuality or homosexuals. Usually the posts have links to items which are being referenced. So it's an informative blog which could be of interest to a large number of my readers. So take a look.

A Night at the Opera
As I mentioned in a recent post, last night was a night at the opera for me. "Il Trovatore" is one of my favorite operas, and it was good to be able to see it again, even in a video recording. I saw it at the old Metropolitan Opera House something over 50 years ago. It was a good performance, and the music itself is great, IMO. The only real problem, from my point of view was that the volume was set too high. This was not a problem in previous operas I attended in this format. Maybe it was because this time I was in the next to last row, whereas the other times I was near the front. Perhaps we were too close to the speakers.


I gave my companion a ride to and from the theater, and we had time for supper at a Japanese-Chinese restaurant near the theater before the show. Afterwards, I had to bring him directly home, because he has to get up early in the morning for his job. It was pleasant being with him, and I hope we'll  have more occasions to get together.

Happenings, Followers

Happenings

     I've been spending so much time looking at videos on YouTube (my latest fad is "Pirates of Penzance") that I haven't been keeping up with my own posting.

     In late March, I went on another retreat, and I've been meaning to post about it. The daily routine was similar to the one in 2009, but I had a different director and got different things out of it. So I'll give you some posts about that. (I also want to get back to posting on the Theology of the Body.)

     More recently, there have been a couple of things worth mentioning, things outside the normal routine during the Boston concert season.

     I sent Seth the Waiter an e-mail, and he replied, with some friendly words, including an invitation to let him know if I was going to be at the restaurant of a Monday or Saturday, and a link to his boss's legislative website. It's pleasant to know that he thinks well of me.

     On May 3, I got together for lunch with a guy I met through blogging. Our first get-together irl was at a baseball game a couple of years ago, where we took an instant liking to each other. Since then we've met two or three times for dinner and gone to a movie and to a screening of the opera "Nixon in China" from the Met. So this time we had lunch at a nice but not too fancy restaurant, then went to a coffee shop where he's kind of a regular, and then strolled around for a while, until he had to go to work. He's just a super-nice guy, and I always enjoy being with him. Next Wednesday evening we'll be going to the "encore presentation" of the Met's April 30 matinee of "Il Trovatore," which is one of my favorite operas.

     May 6 would have been my mother's 100th birthday, and my brother suggested we should mark the event by going to a restaurant for dinner. We settled on a nice one that we had sometimes taken her to for her birthday, and it was an okay evening. Unfortunately, I don't feel extremely close to my brother, so there were gaps in the conversation when we tried to come up with something to talk about. He's not a bad guy, and I hope I can build a warmer relationship with him.


Followers

     Since the last time I welcomed new followers, six more have decided to follow! That seems to give me 92 altogether. At this rate, I should be at the century mark by Thanksgiving. The new followers are as follows.

Ken, for whom I find no blog listed. When I go to his avatar on my dashboard, there is a link to Picasa Web Albums, but the page doesn't seem to have any photos posted yet. If there is a blog or anything else I could follow, I'd be happy to know about it so I could follow in return.

jonalton, similarly, has no blog listed in the page I reach for him from my blogger dashboard. Again, if he has a blog or website, I'd be happy to know about it so I could follow.

Dave is an English (Mancs, I think) teenager and has the blog DAVE THE RAVE, which some of you may already be familiar with, since he has 107 followers. If not, I can tell you, it's a journal type blog, which makes for interesting reading as he tells of family, work, and friends.

gordito is another follower for whom no additional information appears through my dashboard. I'd welcome information about a blog or website.

Moderate Fundamentalist (great name, IMO) is in London, England, according to his profile, where he lists his interests as Faith and Friendship. His blog is appropriately titled Moderate Fundamentalism and it seems to be mainly concerned with current events. He links also to a number of religiously themed blogs on his blogroll.

Scott, is the latest to become a follower of this blog, and, regrettably, I have no more information about him. So, once more,if there is a blog or website, I'd like to know about it so I can follow.

     I appreciate the interest of these new followers, as well as all those who have been following for longer periods, and I hope what I post will continue to interest you, and I welcome any comments you may care to make on anything I post.

A Night at the Opera and Duck Soup

I'm not talking about the Marx Brothers movies, but the possibility of a legitimate title with the same names in it was too good to pass up.

A Night at the Opera: Last week I went to a nearby multiplex to see a repeat screening of an HD broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera of a live performance of Giuseppe Verdi's opera "Don Carlo," which is one of the greatest operas of all time IMO. I posted about it on my music blog. Here I just want to encourage anybody who is at all curious about opera to check these broadcasts out. Too bad you missed Don Carlo, but there are several still to come which might be interesting for newbies. "Nixon in China" is obviously fairly new. It is in a style called "minimalism," music which keeps the same sound and rhythm over extended periods, sorta like Enya. Then, for more traditional music, you've got "Il Trovatore," another masterpiece by Verdi, with great melodies one after another (and in this production some shirtless hunks in the "Anvil Chorus"), and "Lucia di Lammermoor" by Donizetti, which has not only the famous "mad scene" for the soprano, and the sextet, but also some great singing for the guys, both alone and together.

So check out the links on the other blog for times and locations and further information, including how to get tickets. Gay guys are famously opera lovers in disporportionate numbers. So give it a try, and enjoy.


Duck Soup: It was time to finish off the carcass of the "Dead Duck" of a few posts back, so I broke it up a bit and boiled it — including the neck and giblets — and a large cut up carrot with a can of chicken broth, the congealed juices that had collected on the serving platter, and the left over cooking water from the potatoes and squash I had with it. I picked all the meat and some of the cartilage off the bones (and had about half the meat, including the giblets, for dinner last night, with left over gravy and some rice cooked in a bit of the soup, and on the side the last of the apple and prune stuffing reheated with a tablespoon each of  Haitian rum, bourbon whiskey, and Grand Marnier — very tasty — some chili powder sprinkled on the rice perked it up) and put the soup and carrots into the fridge. Today the soup was nicely jellied. I used a pint — about half the total — to cook a packet of ramen noodles, adding some chopped crimini mushrooms and paprika (both hot and mild) along with the shrimp flavor packet that came with the noodles. It made an enjoyable lunch. With what's still left, I should get another good dinner and another satisfying lunch. I'm not sure exactly what variations I'll make next time. Bon Appetit — though I say it to myself!

Three Funerals and "Simon Boccanegra"

If I've been commenting on your blogs a bit less than usual, I've been a bit busier than usual. This week I've the events mentioned in the title, and there's even more than that.

The first funeral was yesterday morning. An acquaintance from when I was a teenager whom I've seen off and on over the ears. Couple of years older than me. Member of my church. All-around good guy. Fought cancer for ten years. Cancer finally won. Leaves a widow, three adult children, two brothers, several grandchildren.

Last evening I went to the wake  of the second guy about 30 miles away. Eight months older than me, very active in his parish. I've known him for about 16 years. Heart attack. Visiting hours were 4:00 to 8:00. I arrived at the funeral home just after 7:30. The line was out the door. I got to the family at about 9:15. I understand it had been like that from the beginning. I've never seen anything like it. He obviously touched a lot of people. He leaves his mother, wife, four adult children, and several grandchildren.  I got home a little after 10:00. The funeral was this morning, and it was also thronged.

Thursday at noon will be the funeral of the 85 year old brother of a 90 year old lady who used to talk my ear off on the train as we commuted to work in Boston. She is the aunt by marriage of someone who served with me in town government for a number of years, so she felt she knew me. The man finally succumbed to years of respiratory trouble. He was widowed, and leaves two sisters, three children and four or five grandchildren.

Thursday night I'll go in to Boston to hear a concert performance of Verdi's awesome opera, "Simon Boccanegra." (Lots of Verdi's operas are awesome.) And lucky you can hear it virtually live when the Saturday night performance is streamed over www.wcrb.com at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time. If you miss it then, you can catch it 8 days later in a delayed rebroadcast/stream over www.wgbh.org on Sunday, February 8, at 2:00 p.m.

Here's an article about the opera from this past Sunday's Boston Globe.

http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2009/01/25/the_psychology_of_power/

The opera has several powerful moments. Right at the beginning there is a great scene for the bass, as he sings of his grief over the death of his daughter and asks her, now in heaven, to pray for him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIQEMt0HlOU&feature=PlayList&p=1D7556FE93EC3D82&playnext=1&index=21

Then there is a beautiful scene for the soprano where the orchestra captures the feeling of the rippled sea. The soprano and baritone have a thrilling duet as they realize that she is his long-lost daughter. (Verdi's daughter had died, and he had a thing for father-daughter relationships.) And then there is the Council Chamber scene described in the article, with the noble music for the baritone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFtKL7k9Xcw&NR=1

That's the end of the scene. The first to sing is Boccanegra, denouncing the strife and calling for peace and love. Also prominent are the irreconcilable Fiesco and Boccanegra's daughter Maria, still believed to be Amelia Grimaldi by all except father and daughter.

Here's the father-daughter recognition scene. The the excitement grows on his part as she describes her earliest memories. At 4:40 he asks if her earliest guardian was named Giovanna, and if the portrait that Giovanna said was her mother matched the one he has. Yes! She is his long-lost daughter, and the daughter of Fiesco's dead daughter. I get tears of joy at their reunion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BVZQtLelns

Check out the videos, especially if you aren't familiar with opera. You just might find the music powerful.

If you'd like more previews, search YouTube for Boccanegra. And I'm sure you can find a good plot synopsis on Google.