Veni, Vidi, Verdi

Seattle has many classical music outlets, primary among them Seattle Symphony. Next week (from June 23rd to 26th), the Symphony is bringing Verdi's Requiem to Benaroya.

Seattlest could totally geek out about this, but we won't. We do love classical music, though, especially anything Verdi wrote for the voice, and we hope to one day, maybe, sing the soprano solo in his Requiem. Besides, Verdi's Requiem wasn't well-loved by everyone; Wagner, adhering to the old adage "If you can't say anything nice…" said of the piece, "It is better to say nothing."

But that's Wagner. Seattlest is excited about these performances for a few reasons. One, it can be pretty cheap for a single gal to go enjoy the ol' requiem: tickets are $15 – 85 (our advice, if you're going for the cheap seats, is to borrow some binoculars so you can watch the singers make funny faces). Two, a local is singing the tenor solo: Vinson Cole, who's on the voice faculty at University of Washington. Three, we just think it's bound to be gorgeous. We do love Verdi and all, but this really excites us. Which leads right into: Four, the geek-out potential, as mentioned above.

Now, Seattlest will also tell you that this week, from the 16th to the 19th, the Symphony is featuring R. Strauss' Also sprach Zarathustra, which some of you may remember from the opening of 2001—A Space Odyssey. It is a tone poem which has also received its fair share of study; it just doesn't excite us as much as the Verdi piece, 'cause it doesn't have any singers.