Vingt Regards:I. Strange Bedfellows

Non-stop traveling these past few weeks have taken a toll on Teh Blague and created a tremendous and uncomfortable backlog of posts. So, in an effort to reactivate peristalsis, here begins, in no particular order, a series of short posts: Vingt Regards de Monsieur C—.

[Peter] Gelb excused himself and went to the back of the house, to greet another star who had just made an appearance: Novak Djokovic, the Serbian tennis player, who, the previous evening, had triumphed in the men's semifinals at the U.S. Open. [Natalie] Dessay had been in the stands, and when she and Djokovic were introduced, after the match, he sang her the opening of "Don Giovanni." The Met's press office had arranged for Djokovic to attend the rehearsal, and when Dessay stopped singing Gelb led Djokovic onto the stage. Dessay shook his hand warmly, encouraged him to experiment with the acoustics of the house by delivering a few whoops, and prodded him to sing a few bars of Mozart, which he did enthusiastically and tunelessly.

—Rebecca Mead, "Man behind the Curtain," The New Yorker (10.22.07)