Sunday afternoon at the opera

It was a lovely sunny (if a bit cool) day in Chicago, but at the Harris Theatre it was all darkness and melancholy and psychodrama, as the Chicago Opera Theatre performed Bela Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle and Arnold Schönberg's Erwartung. Both productions were wonderful. Great voices (Sam Ramey was Bluebeard), evocative lighting, creative set design. (Weird coincidence: I'm reading a collection of short stories called New Orleans Noir, and on the bus going home, I started reading a story with a character nicknamed Blue Beard!)