San Francisco War Memorial Opera House - Madama Butterfly

It was a few years back my husband and I had an opportunity to watch Madama Butterfly at the Opera House in San Francisco.  I remember it was a very long drive because of the heavy traffic.  We arrived at 6:30 that evening.  It was a very cold night, but we enjoyed the opera very much.
This is the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco.  It's a very old but beautiful buidling.

We waited a while before we were let into the theater. Here is a gorgeous interior picture I found online:

I was lucky to find these videos from You Tube.  There were two screens hung on each side of the theater.  It was a good thing that they shown the English subtitle on the screens through out the entire play. This is a story about a 15 years old Japanese girl who fell in love in Japan with a U.S. Naval officer.  Unfortunately the officer had to go back to America.  She waited for him to come back to reunite with her and their son.  After 3 years of waiting, she found out he had already married and brought the new wife with him.  She was so devastated and commited suicide.  For more detail on the story, you can read Madama Butterfly here.e

Here is a song most of us are familiar with:



This is the finale where Madama Butterfly wanted to commit suicide:



It was worth the time to experience the opera for the first time.  Ever since that time, I fell in love with opera and had watched a few since then.

Celebration Chinese New Year theme

I was cleaning up my house this morning.  It's traditional for every family to clean up the house before the New Year to sweep away any old ill-fortune in hopes to make way for good incoming luck. I put up a couple of New Year decorative items which have themes of “happiness”, “wealth”, and “longevity near the window and door.  While doing that, I was also lookng for some Chinese New Year holiday musics to listen to. I found this Yanni's piece on YouTube and I just couldn't resist sharing this with all of you.  This is such a beautiful, peaceful and mesmerizing piece.  I have been Yanni's fan for many years.  My boss was the one who introduced Yanni's music to me over 20 years ago. I thought this would be a good time to share music that fits the west meets east genre since Chinese Lunar New Year happens to fall on this coming Sunday, same day as Valentine's day.  Here's Yanni performed in Forbidden City,  China.  

Nightingale

The Piano

I posted an introduction of this movie, The Piano, on my Chinese blog and  received an overwhelming number of  views on that particular post.  It seems a lot of my visitors love the music.  I decided to post it here as well so that all of you can enjoy the beautiful music and scenery of the movie.  Maybe a lot of you have already seen this movie.  The movie is about a muted married woman who fell in love with her neighbor, and the piano meant everything to her.  It's a great movie but not suitable for those under the age of 18.  For movie details please read here:

 Clip from the movie:

This Made Me Cry

This subject title immediately caught my attention when I open my email and later found out it's a great commercial to watch.  Like most of the people, whenever there's a commercial going on TV, I would use the  remote control to change and flip to other channels until the commercial ended.

After taking a psychology class back in my college years.  I have changed my way of thinking about commercial.. The professor who taught the class had always lectured in  a very humorous way and  he would talk about anything that's funny to get us interested. One of the thing I remember he said was he liked watching commercial, becuase of how some commercial can be very funny and influential.  I started to watch commercial since then, and begin to realize so much were put into just one short commercial. No wonder a short commercial can cost so much.

The commercials today are so well thought of and so sophisticated to watch.  Marketing product required  good brain storming.  Some commercials are truly intriguing and remarkable to watch.  For example, there's a jewelry store had an advertisement on Patek Philippe watches with a slogan "You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely take care of it for the next generation." What a great slogan.  That advertisement alone immediately brought up the sales.   Here's the funny commercial I received:.

Now I am wondering and interested to know if any of you like to watch commercial like I do!