Parlez-vous 'Opera'?

So, you start to wonder about that English-speaking opera revival movement at Harvard. With three operas staged this year, and an additional one in the works for next year (bringing the grand total to four), your fifteen minutes of high culture fame may be here.

Dunster House Opera is looking for musical directors, opera directors and a whole slew of people to help with next season's productions. It's a great opportunity to be involved in some musical theatre of true quality and a warm and friendly circle of people to boot. Don't be afraid--opera isn't as intimidating as it may seem at first. Get in touch with your diva (or techie) side and get involved. Chances are you'll enjoy it.

Alternative Earth Day

On Saturday, April 25th, nearly 100 environmental exhibitors and crunchy folks will gather at the Hatch Shell to celebrate Mother Earth. The Esplanade will be the location of EarthFest 1998, hosted by WBOS.

With performances including the regrouped 10,000 Maniacs, and the other Paul Simon, Marc Cohn, the EarthFest promises warm music and good cheer. In the past, the show has been held in the panopticon called City Hall--which has been markedly less grassy and more about bricks.

So if you need something to do while hosting your pre-frosh next weekend, consider celebrating our planet musically.

Fest Fever

Tis spring. Tis the season for Harvard students to emerge from a foreboding stack of papers and re-enter the world of sunshine and warmth. Tis the season for a healthy host of Harvard "fests." Coming up this weekend is the much-heralded Thropstock at Winthrop House (and you're all invited--even if you don't live there!) Thropstock promises to be a veritable confluence of fabulous music, with several student bands on the day's bill. In addition to the bands, there will be several arts and crafts areas--and the folks over at Winthrop House don't mean left-over PTA projects. There will be tattoo design, weaving, face painting and Ukranian egg design, among others fabulous arts activities. This year also marks the revival of fabled jello-wrestling. That may or may not contribute to the arts scene at Thropstock... After this week's fling, look forward to SpringFest next week and Arts First the week after. This, dear readers, is as good as it gets.

Springtime Blues

They're painting the Yard. You're gazing out of your 11 o'clock class, it's sunny, and you notice that the Yard has been transformed from its hopeful-looking greenishness into turquoise. Turquoise. Azure. Teal. One might expect--and even accept--a nice hunter green, even kelly green, but the color of the Yard is now currently bordering on blue. The administration has not gone crazy, of course. Commencement is coming up in June, and the Yard would be even uglier than it is now if thousands of students, alumni and parents trampled the Yard into a muddy pulp. The overall artistic effects of the grassy Commencement Yard greatly outweigh the currently blue Yard. With the return of Blue is the return of that smell, the smell of that fertilizer which embodies for so many of us springtime and summer at Harvard. (You know the cool, acidic smell--the blue smell). There is always a day in springtime when one wakes up and finds the grass green for the first time, but it is only at Harvard that the magical springtime moment happens when one wakes up to the blue Yard.