The girlfriend and I went to Lakmé on Wednesday as a Valentine's-y date, and we came away very disappointed. Bored, to be precise. So much so that we were nodding off from time to time (though not as bad as the guy next to us who would start to snore and then jerk back awake from his own noise).

Now, operatic scenarios are a narrative genre unto themselves, what with the weighty issues and melodramatics and whatnot (almost like Degrassi Junior High in that sense). And I was well aware that this one would be full of 19th-century exoticist fantasies and a loosely defined Otherness that was an excuse to toss in some sensuous and dangerously chromatic musical language. But a few coloratura passages and a forbidden love affair alone do not an interesting opera make. The Flower Duet is still exceptional--it was pretty much the reason we bought tickets in the first place--and well done, and the soprano who played Lakmé brought a lot of life to her own arias, but otherwise things came across as a Carmen or Madama Butterfly that got lost in translation to "India".

It seems some biting parody of this operatic genre of interracial passion should exist somewhere. Something that mocks all the conventions of the forbidding father of the irresistible ethnic chick who swears to defend her honor against the smitten White officer who spurns his bland fiancée and his duty. If one doesn't already exist, I'm pitching the idea to Woody Allen.