The issue with having a transformative experience in the arts is that it opens the door to a lifetime of disappointments. I fell completely for opera when I saw Natalie Dessay in Mary Zimmerman’s production of Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” at the Metropolitan Opera in 2007, and all that has given me is nearly a decade of underwhelming, non-life-altering Lucias—including from Dessay herself when she took the role on again a few years later.


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