It was a day with three highlights. Most days are lucky to have one.

We were out and about, filling the time before the performance.

We were passing Canterbury Records on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena. I called it to our attention, said something positive, and rather than drive by, we parked. Kristina was driving.

We stopped out of deference to me, because this has been “our record store” for many years, and Shirley and I went there often and added to our collection which approached 10,000.

The same two guys were at the counter. Continuity is comforting and satisfying.

I referenced the way they tracked down special orders. I mentioned my donations not so many years ago, when I was downsizing. We didn’t have the capability to play videos anymore, had switched to DVDs, and I wanted to clear the shelves of videos while they were still fresh enough to watch.

I had loaded boxes into the car, six in the trunk, four on the back seat, two on the passenger side. Three or four hundred videos.

I carried a box to the store, they got a dolly, and together we loaded and wheeled the boxes to the back where they would be sorted for display. Quality videos, classic movies, classical music, opera, ballet, symphonies, recitals. A quality collection, a valuable donation, a free gift. They said, “Thank you.”

So I went home and packed up another load. The dolly was a big help. “Thank you.”

So I went home and got another load. “A lovely generous gift, but we’re running out of room, and these aren’t the videos many people are buying, so enough for now, thank you.”

Another time, I brought in some 78s, the old heavy brittle disks before long play vinyl. I brought in an old 16” record from radio broadcast. I thought it would make a good display.

For Chaz, it was a first visit to Canterbury. For Kristina, it was revisiting childhood. For me, without Shirley, it was a renewal.

We talked for a long time, covering many topics. Shared enthusiasms don’t have a time limit.

In the store, there was music playing in the background, a beautiful clear soprano voice singing from the quality repertoire. I asked who it was. “Lucia Popp.” I said, “Of course.” Then I asked how they decided what to play to fill the store’s atmosphere as they played disk jockey.

“I look at the customers and decide what they’d want to hear, partly by what they’re looking at, what they’re buying.”

I didn’t challenge him, put him on the spot, not saying, “What was it about me that led you to play Lucia Popp?”

As we were talking, when a customer approached the counter, we stepped aside. First things first. Money. It is a business.

Then back to our conversation, including the Altadena fire, where were you when. He said, “I live on Hill, in Pasadena, just down from Altadena. We could see the fire, burning embers flying down the street.”

An old guy but maybe younger than me was hanging around the counter, listening in, adding to the discussion. He was obviously a regular. He had three CDs in his hand, and talked enthusiastically about his life, his career as an artist, record jackets he designed, and his posters for big name concerts, some of which were displayed in the window.

He dropped names. He was in no hurry. So many of us, especially when we age, are hungry for conversation. I gave him my card. He said he would look at my blog.

It was a lovely no pressure chunk of the afternoon. Kristina bought a record from the new inventory.

I took a quick look, wanted to find and buy something, chose a CD of the original recording of Walton’s opera Troilus and Cressida. I have it on LP, but the CD will let me play it on the computer. It’s an opera I’m going to suggest to the L.A. Opera as something they should add to their repertoire. I’d like to see it. In spite of the difficulties Walton had wrestling it into shape. The recording features Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. Some of the lines and phrases haunt me, like “a wind in the long grass blowing…”

The CD was a “find,” $5.99, $6.52 with tax.

The visit to Canterbury Records would have been enough highlight for one day, but we had tickets for Amadeus at the Pasadena Playhouse. Chaz insightfully gave them to me as a Christmas present, and this was the day to collect. I’m so spoiled.

We decided to have dinner first. It was 6:00 o’clock. The play starts at 8:00.

We drove close, parked, then walked through a twilight that was trying to decide when it would release the rain hovering overhead.

Kristina had looked at the map and restaurants in the area, decided on Urth Café, and we walked the long block, me with my walking poles.

Urth was crowded inside, outside patio seating was less desirable as sprinkles started to fall, so we retraced our steps to Anayas, which we had passed and noted as a possibility.

A really good choice. A downtown Mexican restaurant, family owned and run, an extensive menu, a friendly cousin waiter, and a brick wall on one side that said, “This place is old,” reminding me of the brick wall at Angeline’s in Berkeley, with the wonderful Cajun ribs, where Chaz and Kristina had taken Shirley some years before, and she raved about it.
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Kristina ordered Molcajete de carnes, add shrimp. Chaz ordered Fajitas combo, and I did too so I wouldn’t have to worry over the menu, and Fajitas has just about everything included.

The waiter, as good waiters do, joked and answered our jokes, was alert and friendly, comes from a good family.

The food arrived in mass quantity. Kristina’s was the most massive, had the meats and seafood hanging off the edges of the stone bowl. We ate and ate until we could eat no more, got two containers for left overs to put in the car when we went to the theater.

The dinner was the second highlight of the day.

Then the few steps from the car to the Playhouse. It was already raining.

I got there first, as Chaz and Kristina were stowing the left overs in the trunk. I waited in the side passage covered from the rain, thus avoiding the open patio with the fountain as the main entrance.

A friendly woman who had seen middle age come and go was standing in the passage. We were an hour early, 7:00. The show starts at 8:00. I thought the woman was a patron early like us. No, she was a staff member, but had time to talk.

We all said some of the usual. I think we’d all seen the movie. We all love Mozart. The woman started singing “La ci darem la mano,” the duet from Don Giovanni. She had an actual voice, had obviously sung, and was still singing. She was surprised when I joined in. I shifted my voice into higher gear, sang past the part she knew.

She told us about the little side café where we could wait, that there would be a free pre-show concert with music students, we should take advantage, we’d love it. She was right.

Inside, we found places to sit at the back and side. I sat on the edge of a kind of soft bench, and two young women scooted over. They were friendly, knowledgeable, and we all talked up a storm.

I steered the conversation, as I almost always do, “You haven’t been reading my blog, have you?” The “No” was the opening for me to flourish my case and pass them a card. They promised to look.

They had to leave, but we stayed because four young musicians came onto the little stage. The standard string quartet, two violins, a viola, and a cello. The leader of the group, a teacher at the music academy, gave us a little background on the classes offered, then told us they would play the first and fourth movements of Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.” Good choice, since tonight’s performance of Amadeus was all Mozart.

The quartet played with satisfying proficiency, bowed, and it was time to go into the theater proper for tonight’s performance.

My first experience with the Playhouse was seventy years earlier when my high school sophomore class from Mark Keppel High was bussed to a performance of Romeo and Juliet by the Young Old Vic. That changed my life, or at least directed it.

Then we were young eager teenagers sitting in the balcony. But for tonight, Chaz had bought orchestra seats in the fourth row. I’m not used to being pampered and spoiled, but I’m not complaining.

The Pasadena Playhouse has trained generations of famous actors for the stage and screen. There’s a tower of classrooms four or five stories high, but the main theater is a real theater, large enough to accommodate an audience, intimate enough so everyone is close to see and hear everything. Absolutely professional. And when the curtain went up, the highest standards of New York Broadway or London, inventive staging, costumes, acting, first rate.

I sometimes forget that Pasadena is not just a modest sized suburban city, on the edge of provincialism. It’s first rate in so many ways that you don’t really need to go anywhere else for culture or the richness of life.

And the performance itself, quality.

Actors embodying the roles, characters real. And the live singing, real voices. Kristina said she turned her head a few times to check on me, and saw me smiling broadly.

This was like the Best of Broadway by West Coast extension. Yes, I was happy as a clam.

I gave in to “the willing suspension of disbelief,” never mind any historical inconsistencies. It is what it is, and does itself proud.

I know I don’t get out enough. I know there’s lots of life left to live.

Today was a Triple Crown. Three Highlights. And Mozart. Arguably my favorite composer, or at least, without argument, a composer I can’t live without. Every time I sing his music, I thank him for knowing me so well.

And that’s my lengthy brief account of my day I’m calling Amadeus.