November 6, 2007

My birthday started off on a sour note, although I was still riding high from the weekend, so it barely phased me. Our flight to Chicago was cancelled, but we weren’t informed till we arrived at the airport at 5:30. We were soon rerouted to Dallas, however, and I barely minded having got up so early. (After all, with the time change, it was only 9:30 on my bio-clock.)

In Dallas, we had a stopover. I pulled out my iPod and accidentally clicked a file I hadn’t intended to listen to. It was an historic recording made in Dallas on November 6, 1958: the Callas/Vickers Medea, an event also remembered as the performance during which Callas was fired from the Met by Rudolph Bing. Some claim Callas’s anger at receiving Bing’s telegram was responsible for having created such an explosive performance. It’s certainly one of her best. Watching the city in the distance, I listened to the performance of one of my favourite operas made here, on my birthday, 49 years earlier.

We arrived in Detroit at 6:30 that evening, only two hours later than planned, picked up our car and drove home to Toronto through a sudden blizzard that slowed driving down for more than an hour along the 401. Oh, Canada!