I finally got to see the inside of McCaw Hall a couple of weeks ago at a performance of Die Fledermaus (my friend Eleanor sings in the chorus at the Seattle Opera). Imagine my surprise as, on my way to the bathroom during the first intermission, I pass a wall with a dozen or so huge black and white paintings with birds on that look very familiar.

“Hey these look suspiciously like that one painting hanging over the fireplace in Blaine and Ret’s new house.”

So I go and check the signage: Sure enough, “Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird by Michael Spafford, 1986,” which was based on Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Blackbird,” or was it based on Dennis Lucas’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Crow–after Wallace Stevens” as my own “A dozen or so ways of looking at a door” was in Jim Mitsui’s high school creative writing class?

The special guests at Prince Orlovsky’s party (which is apparently a tradition for Die Fledermaus) were “celebrating his 250th birthday, introducing Mozart!” (which I remembered from seeing Google change their logo yesterday on account of his birthday) who came out and introduced an up and coming diva whose name I didn’t catch but who sang a really beautiful aria from Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, and David Horsey, the editorial cartoonist for the P-I, who apparently is a repeat guest and used to play French horn in the Youth Symphony as a kid. The governor was supposed to come opening night, but the floods kept her busy. Jamie Moyer was supposed to come too, but cancelled. Jamie Moyer’s daughter was in Madame Butterfly as the child a few years ago. They did get Slade Gorton and the attorney general, but why mention that?

Great show. Especially since it was in English with English supratitles. I didn’t realize how well I knew the music already and had known it for years, and would be very surprised if the narrative device had never been lifted for a film script.

But that hall…wow…I mingled a lot and went out of my way to inspect the lobbies of all three tiers during the intermissions.