I’m just home from work. Eugene Onegin, in case any readers have forgotten.

Some operas get easier as we go along. Some get harder. For me, Eugene Onegin is the latter. And it’s a reed eater too. So far I’ve used four reeds, if I’m remembering correctly.

Tonight, though, I wasn’t happy, wasn’t comfortable, and then I mangled one run completely. What I should have played: Fourth line D# down to C double sharp, back to D# to E# to F double sharp to G# to A# to B. Sure, it sounds easy, yes? But I looked up at the conductor (or tried, he’s so high up there I really can’t see him) and when I looked back the music was just gone. Or something. The run repeats only four beats later so I at least got that, but geesh … I’m am completely unforgiving when wrong notes are played by anyone else, and much more so when I’m the culprit. But I hear that the row behind me laughed, so I guess I made them happy. I have to admit whatever it was I played must have sounded completely hysterical but, I fear, I think it was similar to how I mangled something at our daughter’s wedding.

Sigh.

Stuff happens. Ya just have to learn to laugh at it and then not let it happen again. (Laughing and then repeating the error is a very bad thing to do.)

No opera tomorrow. Then it’s four nights in a row. This is one demanding first oboe book. I think I’ll watch the movie of the opera that PH loaned me tonight. I’d like to get the music more firmly in this thick head ‘o mine, and seeing it would be fun.