Goines On: The magic “ha! ha! ha!”

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While Goines craned his neck back to squeeze artificial tears into his eyes, he became aware that, with each breath, he was emitting a barely audible “ah” sound. The repetition of “ahs” put him in mind of Philip Glass’s glorious music in the final act of Akhnaten, which he and Mrs. Goines had gotten to listen to on the car radio four days earlier, as they drove home from another foray of theater-broadcast opera in Chapel Hill. Saturday’s opera hadn’t been live, but a recording of the Met’s premier live broadcast from 2006, of Julie Taymor’s abridgment of Mozart’s The Magic Flute.

Goines On: Up and down with Akhnaten

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Goines wasn’t an opera buff, but he much enjoyed the live HD broadcast of a NY Metropolitan Opera performance for which he and Mrs. Goines had driven to a Chapel Hill movie theater over the weekend. The Met had performed Philip Glass’s Akhnaten, its musical score so “different,” even professional opera reviewers might feel challenged to rise to the occasion. So, what could Goines possibly say? What would he even title a review?