As every parent knows, you shouldn’t mention one without mentioning the other. Well, I had a great day yesterday in the Big Apple bonding with my daughter Nellie (15). A generous friend of ours is a patron of the Metropolitan Opera, and so under cover of our friend’s name we did the patron’s tour of the whole facility. I’d done it before 20 years ago, but I wanted Nellie to see it all.

What an operation that is! The sheer logistics of getting an opera production up and running — the sets and lighting, carpenters and electricians, costumes and wigs, rehearsing and cuing and prompting and managing those seat-back libretto screens — is military-scale. Picked up some nice little factlets, too. Did you know, for example, that the advent of HD (high-definition) video productions has changed the whole art of makeup, including wig-making, and forced higher standards of maintenance on the people who look after the sets? HD is unforgiving. One disappointment: When I did my previous tour, they let us go into the little prompt box at the front of the stage. It’s like a space capsule — a Mercury capsule, I guess, since it’s one-person. You have to squirm up into it. However, some idiot on some previous tour got hurt getting out of the thing, and now they don’t let visitors go in there. Damn lawyers. (And did you know that the prompt lady speaks only the first syllable of each word? Prompting’s something of an art.)

All right, now here’s the thing. I notice the Met is doing a complete Ring in March-April. I’m a Ring virgin — never sat through even one of the four operas. Well, time to fix that. I’m going to buy myself a Ring on CD and have it on as background music while I work, taking breaks now and then to scrutinize the libretto and read up some background. By March I should be enough of a Ring expert (ein Ringforscher, whatever) to get good value for my (gulp!) $100 tickets.

Trouble is, there’s rather a lot of Ring recordings out there. So I’m looking for recommendations. CDs only, I’ve no time to sit & watch DVDs, & haven’t really made friends with opera on DVD anyway. Must have a libretto in German & English; must transmit something of the true Ring experience, which I’ve heard people swoon over. I want to swoon too. Then, when Maestro Levine steps up to his podium next Spring, I’ll be all primed for maximum live-performance swoon. Suggestions gratefully received, to my email address as scrawled here.