Today we took a look at an exhibition at the Morgan Library informing us about Edgar Degas’ study of form in space using an Afro-American acrobat as his subject. Edgar first saw the sensational performances of ‘Miss LaLa’ in January of 1879 at the Cirque Fernando in Montmartre. Her ‘strong act’ included being suspended upside down from a trapeze while holding in her teeth a wire from which was suspended a small cannon (which was so heavy it took two men to lift it) with her teeth. As one would expect, when the canon was thus hoisted up to a position high the watching audience, and held there only by the incredible strength of Miss Lala’s teeth and jaws, it was duly lit and fired.
From the moment he first saw her act Degas was transfixed by the shape and movement of Miss Lala’s body as it swung from the ceiling (with or without the cannon attached). He spent weeks working on studies of her suspended in the air, and this exhibition had managed to assemble every known example of those studies and preparatory sketches as well as the finished work itself (on loan from the National Gallery in London).
As we explored the exhibition it gradually became clear that, in order to put all this together, a huge international effort of cooperation had been required involving not just the Morgan Library and the National gallery, but also the Tate Gallery, the JP Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Barber Institute in Birmingham, the V&A Museum in London, The Zimmerli Museum in New Jersey, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and works from various private collections as well as rare books from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the University of Pennsylvania and Rutgers University to put the exhibition together. Amazingly in this day and age of new technology, Degas notebook which was too fragile to travel appeared electronically in one of the display areas!
Did I mention that the Morgan Library has a brilliant shop and for those of you with a sense of humour look at www.philosophers guild.com for amusing things like coffee cups with a picture of Vincent van Gogh. Nothing special about that you may think, until you put in a hot drink and his ear disappears! Ha! Ha!
After a spot of shopping we travelled across to the Lincoln Centre to watch the Metropolitan Opera’s performance of ‘Die Walkure’.
Last year, together with Hans and Sue Sauer, we quite literally spent a ‘month of Sundays’ at Cinema Paradiso in Northbridge as we watched the simulcast broadcast (live from the Met) of all four of the operas (the entire 20 hours) that form the complete ‘cycle’ of Wagner’s epic work ‘Der Ring Des Nibelungen’. 
Recently, while attending another opera at the ‘Met’, we saw that they were staging all four operas again this season, so we decided to try to get tickets to see at least one of them.
Fortunately we lucked out and jagged tickets to the most exciting one of all: ‘Die Walkure’. At the start of Act III, ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ is something that has to be seen and felt as to describe this scene does not do it justice. You tube it – I beg you! I’ll let the pictures give you a sniff of its magnificence.
(ps. Today is my parent’s, ‘Nana’ and ‘Pa’ as our boys call them, 55th Wedding Anniversary. Well done you two! That is some rare ground you are standing on!!)
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