La nostra Renata!

Class strikes again! B&N is having a classical music/opera CD sale until June 2nd, buy two get the third free. It's a good deal, there's a nice recording of Carmen and two Anna Netrebko CDs that are brilliant. So get in there and expand your boundaries! In any case, opera and classical music go with tea, don't they? And as you can expect from my last rant, I am no opera poseur, though I don't want to call myself an expert. So I bought seven complete operas by one of the greatest sopranos who ever lived(and she was Italian), Renata Tebaldi. Her Violetta is incredible, and that's all I've listened to so far, but the price of the set was the remarkable thing. $28 for seven complete operas, the recordings are decent, and there is a small biography of la nostra Renata inside as well. I call her that out of respect... So $28, I wondered why opera is always considered some sort of weird upper-class affair when it was so affordable. My co-worker who helped me make the purchase seemed to be surprised I was buying opera(undoubtedly because I don't ooze gajillionaire), but when I pointed out the price they came back to reason. In any case, I want to point out that maybe not every class-exclusive thing is so class-exclusive and that the sociological mindset is still so firmly made about things like opera that even when it costs less than a pair of jeans at Abercrombie and Bitc... Fitch rather, no one is really changing their opinion. So here's to slaying a sociological mindset. Let's all buy affordable opera and listen to it on our four year old CD players! That'll teach em. Comments welcome, have a good night!