Settling into my seat—a leftover single seat between two couples in a row of five in the top balcony—I look down on the Polaroid-shaped frame of the Metropolitan Opera stage. The sight is familiar. I’ve seen the upright rectangle of the stage, the bursting chandeliers, and the deep red of the auditorium seats many times on the Met’s On Demand service. In person, it’s like the man you see every morning on your commute suddenly introducing themselves, and asking, “Am I who you thought I would be?”
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