Wedding Belles and Beaux

Congratulations to all of the couples getting wed at City Hall over the past three weeks and especially to Supers Sergio Suhett and husband John, Milko Encinas and husband Christopher, and SFO chorister (and Spearhead contributor) Tom Reed and husband Ed.

Milko sent the attached photo to many of us and, with those matching shirts, it's hard to imagine a cuter couple. (Click on pic for full-size image and a message from Milko.)

Tom authored a very entertaining and moving account of their marriage in the Sunday Chronicle on February 22nd.

Ulrica has yet to make that trip down the aisle and although this is a Leap Year her many proposals have been politely, but firmly, declined.

In fact, since the last Bake Sale Ulrica's life has been more uneventful than ever and she has been living vicariously through the experiences of others.

Out on a Limb

Spearhead webmaster Mike Harvey took the month of February to relax in San Miguel Allende in Mexico. His emailed postcards were a joy, but Ulrica was alarmed to hear this account of Mike and his partner Paul's close brush with death at breakfast one day:

Yesterday we visited Omanzin, an artist we met at the Instituto de Allende and bought a few little treasures. Among the beautiful jade and bone sculptures and amulets, he had a couple of very scary pre-Columbian gods that I was convinced would be perfect arranged next to my Barcalounger in the rumpus room. So we repaired to the Bellas Artes courtyard to consider things and to have a lemonade, which is of course made with freshly squeezed limes. We chose a table in the shade of a huge and ancient cedar tree. The moment we sat down I heard some muted gasps from the loggia above us and suddenly there was silence, and bark and debris started floating down on our table. It was like the moment just before a tsunami hits when the tide has retreated and all that potential energy is just about to transform into deadly kinetic force. I assumed it was an earthquake and like good California boys we bolted from our chairs and into the center of the courtyard just as a 500-lb limb broke off that cedar tree and crashed down onto our table.

The strange thing is that nobody seemed to take any particular notice. Within seconds, the gardeners had removed the limb and swept up the remains of the shattered planters, and life moved on. We went back to Omanzin's studio and immediately swapped the pre-Columbian gods for a piece of amber filled with petrified gnats.

A Mexican Diva

Also in San Miguel, Mike came across the restored Angela Peralta Theatre allowing Ulrica the opportunity to remember the glorious, but sad, life and career of this nineteenth-century Mexican Diva.

Angela was a great favorite throughout her native Mexico during the 1880s. She was renowned for her interpolated high e-flat at the end of the Triumphal Scene in Aida. Many years later this stunt was repeated by Maria Meneghini Callas, then performing regularly at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. The long and soaring note stunned the 1950 audience and outraged her tenor costar, Kurt Baum. We are lucky to be able to hear her sing it on two live recordings from that period. Click to hear a brief sample of what it must have been like. O to have been a Super in that Aida!

But back to poor Angela. She sailed to Mazatlan in August 1883 to sing in Rigoletto. She arrived to such acclaim that the crowds waiting to greet her unhitched the horses from her carriage and dragged it through the streets to her hotel. She appeared at the upstairs balcony and performed an impromptu concert for her ecstatic fans. However, the boat she had arrived in was carrying Yellow Fever, which Angela contracted and, tragically, died from a few days later.

Feverish Diva Peralta

Such is the nature of a career in Opera: adoration one minute and the next you're history. A sequence of events we Supers are only too familiar with.

O Cecilia, You're Breakin' My Heart

One singer who seems to have staying power is Roman mezzo Cecilia Bartoli. Ulrica was the lucky recipient of a fifth-row-center seat for her recent recital at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley. Being so close gave Ulrica a Super's-eye view of the Bartoli throat, but her prodigious vocal gifts and personal charisma were everything that Ulrica had heard over the last twelve years and she felt to be in the presence of true divinity. (Chronicle review)

Missing in Action

Speaking of things lost� Has anyone seen the Super banner? Its gold lamé may have lost some of its sheen but it's all we have. It was unfortunately left hanging in the downstairs break room after that last Bake Sale, was spotted by Carrie a few days later but now seems to have disappeared. Could it have been stolen by some balletomane? If anyone has any clues please let the Super Committee know.

Out of the Box

Spotted at a glam party at the furniture showrooms of Kneedler-Fauchere last month: Super John M. (�Film�) Martin. John has made quite a career as an event photographer and was busily photographing the singularly well-dressed crowd at this annual Market Week event.

Also hard at work: Super Coordinator Carrie Murphy who is handling media and PR for a new genre film festival taking place at The Victoria Theater at 16th and Mission. Carrie couldn't bear having all that free time now that we Supers are �resting between engagements.� There is still time to check out the Festival's schedule, which is made up of fantasy, sci-fi, horror and noir films, new and old.

Spearhead staffers: a case study using Mike Harvey's DVD, Digital Photography Captured, appeared in the February issue of eMedia Magazine. Mark Burstein's collecting interests in Lewis Carroll got an online profile in AmericanaExchange.

Garage Sale

Mark your calendars for the Super Garage Sale coming up on April 24th (in case of rain, it will be held on May 1st), once again at Charlie Lichtman's Noe Valley house on the corner of Sanchez and 28th Streets. We need volunteers, donations and buyers, so check out the flyer and be there with saleable stuff and lots of cash.

Fall Forecasts

And keep this to yourselves but here's a preliminary listing of Super roles this fall. Cosi will have six men and three women, Traviata eight men, Billy Budd thirty seafaring men, Tosca thirty-five men, seven women and two children, Fliegende Hollander five spinning women and one child, and Eugene Onegin will have one man of a very specific yet-to-be-decided type. No Supers are needed for Le Grande Macabre, sadly. Summer 2005 will give sixteen men a chance to be swarthy and loin-cloth clad in the Zandra Rhodes production of Les Pecheurs du Perles which debuted in San Diego last month.

Remember that these numbers are subject to change and further details will be announced as they become available, so no phone calls to Carrie, please! If Ulrica hears of any offenders she will be forced to cast an evil spell on them�

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