An invitation

NY City Opera opens its spring season this week (the house is used for ballet between the fall and spring seasons), with Wednesday's Mark Morris-ization of Purcell's King Arthur. I -- among, I believe, other bloggers -- was offered complimentary seats to one of the week's kickoff performances.

Now, while nice, this seems a minor spinoff of a more general offer: the general public seems to be getting a season-long version of an "Opera For All" deal -- $25 orchestra seats offered weekly by phone and internet. I could be wrong, but this convenient (line-free) "rush ticket" type arrangement looks new. It seems a good promotion, though perhaps I'd feel differently if I were paying rather more to subscribe in similar seats.

As for the freebie... I do plan to see King Arthur, but Wednesday is the Met's spring kickoff too, with Natalie Dessay's Lucia returning opposite new Edgardo Giuseppe Filianoti. (Craigslist scalpers, incidentally, want premium prices for this sold-out event.) And the rest of the week is also occupied.

If it weren't, though -- I must have an irresistible urge to look gift horses in the mouth, for despite others' positive reactions when the possibility was floated in Maury's comments, the whole press-tickets-for-bloggers business (towards which the above invite is a small but nontrivial step) makes me uneasy. Not just on behalf of my pseudonym, but the whole blogging enterprise. Wouldn't coziness be fatal, and all the more likely to arise when we receive a benefit as unknown individuals without a press institution's backing?

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A mild bug has held up a post on last month's last Manon Lescaut and first Peter Grimes. But it should be up later today (Tuesday).