My Warholesque fifteen minutes of fame (#2)

The Canadian Broadcasting Company airs “Saturday Afternoon at the Opera” every weekend on Radio Two. They used to devote part of one intermission to reading letters from listeners. These were often unsolicited, but sometimes they would propose a specific topic, inviting people to write something relevant to whatever the topic happened to be.

In June of 1996, with the summer olympic games coming up, they suggested that people write about any connections they could think of between opera and athletics: Either scenes from operas in which sporting events occur, or possible plots for hypothetical operas with sports-related themes.

I immediately said “Of course, Wagner and golf have a lot in common”, and my spouse gave me a “what planet are you from?” look. But I did write a letter, and it was read on the air on June 8th, 1996. You can listen to it by clicking here (~17 MByte WAV) or here (~1.5 MByte MP3).