On 1/26/2016 at 7:56 AM, ElainaA said:Yes. I can not listen to opera and cook at the same time. In fact, what can one really do while REALLY listening to opera. (Exception: my husband feels that Wagner, particularly the Ring, is the perfect accompaniment to sheet metal fabrication.)
Heh.
I imagine he must sing along while wrestling with his sheet metal while listening to Siegfried reforging Nothung? :-) Or all those Nibelungen hammering away. :-D
I wonder if he would do the same if listening to something like Lohengrin.
Oh, I wouldn't be able to do anything else when listening to opera in the opera hall, of course**...but when cooking, at home – well, it depends, as I've described. :-D (I used to be a regular annual subscriber to the Met when I lived in the greater NYC area. I miss those days. I bop up to the Chicago Lyric off-and-on nowadays.) Thinking about it more - I *can* listen to various vocal stuff when cooking, with pauses here and there - Dowland songs, for example, goes over reasonably well --- I just incorporate the rhythm and melody into my actions (like various other stuff too) - until something like "Come again, sweet love" (oh, such a cliché, I know) plays/airs, especially if done by David Daniels, say. I just have to stop cooking then.
** I remember one time, though, when I was taking in a performance of Meistersinger at the Met and looking at the simul-translations on that little console in front of me (installed at every seat) when Beckmesser was mangling his stolen-from-Walther song at the competition and almost being unable to stifle laughing out loud at the HILARIOUS translations of his "song" rendered by the Met's translator! But many of the people around me were also stifling their laughter, I realized quickly!
