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Jan 18, 2010 
By 
Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. I hope to return soon.
Meanwhile, as I work in my quiet and empty office, watching the rainstorm outside as I edit a Ninth Circuit brief, I’ve indulged myself by turning up the volume on my iPod dock. Resulting thought for the morning: there are more sublimely beautiful operas than Tannhauser, and there are operas with more completely ridiculous plots than Tannhauser, but I think Tannhauser takes the prize for being most simultaneously beautiful and ridiculous. The transition from Venusberg to the shepherd’s pipes gets me every time. And who can resist an emo-sex-slave-wastrel-knight abjuring a love goddess by invoking the Virgin Mary? That beats the hell out of sneaking out before she wakes up and blocking her calls on your cell phone. Die Zauberflote is more transcendentally beautiful, but dragons and dancing animals notwithstanding, is nowhere near as ridiculous.
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