The Kind of Day You Have to Pay For

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I was out by 7:30 this morning to meet Miranda and Dona for a walk through Dobrinja and Lukavica, residential neighborhoods out by the airport, then I worked in the office for a few hours, then went to Boki's to meet him and visiting editor Dave DeBloss for ice cream and cherries off the huge and red-laden tree in his backyard and then I met Dona by the National Library on the river for the opening concert of Bascarsija Nights -- a month-long celebration of the arts.

The title was the World's Most Beautiful Melodies and it turned out to be a wonderful Bosnian melange of tunes by Verdi, Puccini, Strauss, and Parton. Dolly Parton's "I'll Always Love You" up there with arias from Tosca and Viennese walzes. Along with the city's symphony students from the music academy with harmonikas were on the program. Harmonikas are accordians and that instrument is forever embedded in my mind not with symphonies and operas, but with big, bald cousin Johnny Scaringe playing tarendelles at family weddings. They also had dancers and speeches and they opened the concert and the festival with a fanfare of horns sounded from atop the stunning Austro-Hungarian palace that was the National Library until it was gutten by fire during the war. The amazing fascade was preserved and they lit it with flood lights and sent a squad of musicians in tuxes to the upper balconies. Very showy.

We sat on plastic chairs on the shores of the Miljacka in sweaters to ward off the river chill. But the opera singers and ballerinas whisked to the stage in strapless, silk and tulle gowns.

It was great. I walked home along the Ferhadija humming the last number, an aria from Taviata.