last month, when things were safer in Tel Aviv, i bought tickets for a friend and us for the opera of Romeo and Juliet, slated for this afternoon.  The article in the Jerusalem Post had really hyped it up and I didn’t read it very carefully because I go all hyped about the fact that Romeo and Juliet are both women.  So Bellini’s opera is in itself a stylized, artificial piece, something like a series of staged portraits, and despite the Lesbian pretension, the world in which they exist forbids everything but strict patriarchy and family feuds.  In our world today all rules are open, where anything can happen at any given moment, this opera had absolutely no relevance. 

And yet, it was not that mistake that drove me to leave my friend at the break.  It was the crowding and misbehavior of the audience.   Maybe it was because we were way up on the top, the peanut gallery, but there were no seats free, every other person was wearing a mask, and there was a lot of waving, coughing, kissing, and even dropping of bottles.

So I sat there – double-masked – watching two alleged Lesbians sing to each other without showing any affection to each other – and wishing I hadn’t had lunch because it was coming up.  And it the break, I scooted out – never looking back.

Nili will never talk to me again.  

And it will be a long time before I go to an opera again..

I must add that Orit, who came with us when Ezi backed out, said immediately as we left – that as the stylized pistol battles were going on, she couldn’t stop thinking of Afghanistan, and what were these girls all singing about.  Certainly not life.  Juliet in Bellini’s opera is self imprisoned.  The concept of honor itself, she said, is a prison.  And as we discussed this on the way to the parking lot, we began to move back to the real issues in the world.