Finally, Summer! In the four and a half years I have been in Portland I have grown to really enjoy this city. But I won't lie to you...I am still having trouble with the weather. Between the seemingly endless drizzle of England and the torrential rains of Asia I seem to have lived the vast proportion of my adult life in wet-weather zones when what I really like is Marin County's climate. Still, Rose Festival Week is over so the rain has let up temporarily and we are having some glorious days. So, what with it being Summer time and all, I am not feeling the urge to raise complex, intellectually challenging/stimulating topics; I thought I'd go with lighter fare for a week or two. Switch the Sancerre for a crisp Pinot Grigio. Listen to old Dylan albums and hold off on worrying whether Deborah Voight has lost some of the power in her voice along with all that weight. Of course should you have a subject in mind that you would like me to address don't hold back.

In last week's post I touched upon whether Gilbert and Sullivan is opera. In a comment posted by Lorin Wilkerson he suggested that there be further discussion on the whole what-is-opera topic and asked "...it seems like there are so many shades of gray, and it's a bit confusing. Why would you be able to see "Porgy and Bess" or "Sweeney Todd" at the Royal Opera House, but I can't imagine seeing "South Pacific" or "West Side Story" there. Where is the dividing line? Thematic material? X% of the total number of words sung as opposed to spoken? It's something I've never really been able to figure out..." I promised to address this further this week.

More of that later.

For a couple of weeks I had been hearing commercials on AllClassical for the University of Portland production of The Pirates of Penzance. I was tempted to attend as I have had much fun at previous Mock's Crest productions so when conductor Professor Roger O. Doyle left the customary bribe under a wine coaster at Jake's Grill I cleared the decks for Saturday evening ,called Elizabeth who is a big Gilbert and Sullivan fan and hot-footed it to the Mago Hunt Theater.

"Is G&S opera or...?" Elizabeth began a chat about our date. Don't get her wrong. She knows her opera in general and her G&S in particular. This was more a "So, under what particular operatic rubric does G&S fall?" -type question. Light opera? Operetta? Musical theater, perhaps? And how does one come to a proper conclusion?

One could have been forgiven for believing that the near canonization of Al Gore had been brought to a suitably impressive ending over the last eighteen or so months with his being awarded an honorary fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, prizes in Spain and Sweden, several honorary doctorates, the Sir David Attenborough Award for Excellence in Nature Film-making and an Emmy. Top those off with the conferral of last year's Nobel Prize for Peace and that's a pretty good year by anyone's reckoning. Short of his achieving something truly spectacular - winning Dancing With The Stars, say - it seemed to me as though Mr. Gore's post-presidential-candidature days had pretty much run their course. I had reckoned without them wacky folks at La Scala, Milan who have just announced that they have commissioned an opera. From the book of the documentary-movie of the slide-show of the same name they are to bring you An Inconvenient Truth. The work is to be written by Giorgio Battistelli artistic director of Verona’s Arena opera foundation and a man described as "a composer very much in tune with contemporary themes, including the environment.” I am having a great timewondering who is to be cast in the role of Mr. Gore. Nathan Gunn, perhaps? Who knows, perhaps crowning all of his other achievements Gore himself is a barihunk and will play and sing the role himself.

None of the above should be taken as suggesting I don't admire and respect Gore personally. I do. Very much. And I loved the movie An Inconvenient Truth. Somehow, though, making it an opera just seems a bit silly.