Bel Café, Singing Verdi

Clockwise from the dessert: white chocolate, kalamanzi, coconut dessert;
plant (inedible); Bel chocolate chai tea latte (mine); matcha latte (Phobos').

Phobos and I had a pre-lecture dinner at Bel Café. We each ordered the waiter's recommendation of the roasted eggplant, spiced chickpea, mint, and honeycomb gouda sandwich. I could only eat half of mine, and though it was a very different sandwich in flavour, it did not measure up to my high expectations from reading a review in the paper. Spes humilium!

Dessert and hot beverages were the prettiest part! I would share that dessert with Phobos again in a heartbeat. But I know where my favourite chocolate chai is and that is, for now, East is East.

We then attended Vancouver Opera's Opera Speaks, a free lecture series offered at the Vancouver Public Library. Tonight's was entitled "Singing Verdi" as it is leading up to VO's production of Aida and was hosted by Vancouver Opera Orchestra conductor Jonathan Darlington, a British man that Phobos and I found incredibly amusing. We were also privy to performances of other Verdi repertoire by two of the singers who will be in Aida, a bass and a mezzo-soprano. One of the surprises of the night, other than a heckler who clearly was not at the lecture to learn (he yelled out "Go Canucks Go!" and "Adele!" in response to rhetorical, opera-related questions posed by Mr. Darlington), was when the mezzo-soprano forgot her words right in the peak of her aria and quickly remarked, "Sorry! Brain fart!" She handled herself well afterward and retraced her steps/words, but wow; how scary would that have been if it were in front of a packed theatre in the middle of an opera?