i never liked opera until

I never liked opera until

fiction
edward w pritchard

When I worked part time at a nursing home the head RN who was my boss put me in charge of six wealthy male patients who were finishing out their lives on the payor pay wing of the nursing home and not on any kind of medicare or government assistance. Five of my patients although over 80 could walk so I spent a lot of time walking with the awake ones up and down the halls and outside in the rich neighbor where the nursing home was located. A  lot of the time one of the Lpn's or aides would walk with us so I had someone to talk to which I liked because they were young pretty women. My sixth patient was in a wheelchair and was an ex Russian Olympic world class weight lifter and had had a stroke and refused to be pushed or to have one of the pretty girls walk with  us. He was extremely strong  in his right arm, although the left arm hung limp from stroke and using his good hand one revolution at a time of the wheelchair he would wheel himself  up and down  the halls which were five and fanned out in a star from the center RN's desk there at the nursing home. The reason the Russian weight lifter wouldn't allow any of the pretty nurses to walk with us was because he had took it on himself to educated me about Opera which he had sung in college and like most foreigners wanted to be an opera star when he was young. When he came to find out I didn't know about or like opera he called me a cretin and squeezed my right forearm with his good hand very hard nearly breaking my arm, which was strong as I also worked as a furniture mover then and proceeded to lecture me on opera plots, composers and the intricacies of opera. After a few months I had dated some of the  nurses and one of them wouldn't talk to me or make eye contact and it was awkward there at the nursing home so I quit and went back to being a night auditor at a hotel.

Nearly forty years passed and I was reading philosophy now and then with an educated Italian  guy and he also liked opera and sometime briefly would tell me about the beautiful women who sang as Violetta in Verdi's La Traviata.

Still I never liked opera until the internet came along. It's true never was a beautiful woman so captivating as when she is dressed up like a doll singing "the dolls song" in tales of Hoffman or
singing and playing some other interesting roll in some other famous opera in costume that strikes my fancy. Sometimes I will do a google search of the 127 most stunning  women of opera. Other times I just search most beautiful women players of the piano or violin cause once I knew a real lady who played those two instruments.