Thursday night out

The Provincial Symphonic Orchestra of Rosario gave its (apparently traditional) end of year concert at the Flag Memorial. I've probably said this a million times already, but Rosario is always full of opportunities to experience art and culture for free, and the late spring and summer season are in particular are even better because there are so many things to do outdoors. In this case, on the stairs before the tower of the Monumento a la Bandera.

Now backtracking a little... It turns out I've been dating a certain lady from my photographers' group. We've only gone out a few times but I feel it's going quite fine. She posted the announcement of this concert on the group's discussion page and we agreed we'd go together (instead of me going to another event I'd spotted on the municipality's cultural schedule). I insisted that we keep silent about our thing until we had the chance to tell the group's guys and girls face to face. I'd say there was some astonishment and plenty of cheerfulness.

So, we went and met the rest of the people and sat on the stairs. The Symphonic rehearsed for a while, then started with tango music — wonderful pieces, two by the revolutionary composer Ástor Piazzolla and one by the bandoneón master Rodolfo "Cholo" Montironi. My lady plays the bandoneón herself and she's a tango über-fan, so she was delighted. I know next to nothing about tango, but listening to a full ensemble playing it live and with passion just has to make you appreciate it, if you've got blood in your veins.

A children's choir was called in then, and the orchestra started playing a selection of Bizet's opera Carmen, which you must surely know even if you don't like or listen to opera or classical music at all, because parts of the tune are so popular. Carmen is a French opera about a gypsy woman (and a few other gypsies as well), a soldier whose life she ruins, and a womanizer toréador (a torero, we'd say, i.e. a bullfighter), what we'd call a classic love triangle with a sordid environment and a tragic ending these days, although back when it was composed it was just considered dirty.

At about half the performance (in the middle of the Toréador, in fact), wind started to blow and some light rain began to fall. Within a couple of minutes, both the attendants and the orchestra decided it was time to run for cover before a full-fledged rainstorm unleashed itself. That didn't happen. The rain lasted a short time, but it was enough to ruin the last part of the event. The crowd poured down the exits and only stopped briefly for a final applause.

We were ravenously hungry, so we walked up Córdoba St. to find a place to eat, and found one that sold very respectable, gigantic hot sandwiches with fries, for a very good price. Now being surrounded by photographers, whose ilk I know too well, I knew they'd try to snap a picture of the newly-assembled couple doing the cute things couples do in public and post it on Flickr for everyone to see, thus ruining my theatrical idea of keeping it secret for those who weren't there until we could surprise them. So I stuck my hand out blocking the camera's view at the first attempt, and all seemed to be OK. Then came the inevitable group photo. Being such a fool, I casually composed myself in a less-than-innocent pose, and sure enough, the picture was posted and only then (this morning) I realized I'd blown my cover. Ah well.

So that's it. I confess I'm more than a little nervous about this new (and as yet unlabeled) relationship, having been unattached for quite a while, and on top of it she reads this blog, so she'll be reading this and who knows what she'll think of my enthusiasm. Can't be so bad, though — I have much worse defects to worry about.