Friday night, Rebecca and I had our second date. Well, our second date since Madi arrived anyway (our first post-Madi birth date was Rebecca’s company Christmas party). It turns out that having an infant around sure does cut into dating time! Madi’s Granny came down this weekend to babysit so that we could go on our date, which had been planned months in advance when I bought Rebecca tickets to see Phantom of the Opera, which came to town to kick off this year’s series of Dallas Summer Musicals. Rebecca has always liked this particular musical and she’s been talking about taking me pretty much since we got together. It finally worked out that it was in town and we were available, so that was part of her birthday present.

We kicked off our date Friday night with dinner at Macaroni Grill (fancy, huh?), since Rebecca had just gotten a gift card from work (told ya, fancy!) and had a great meal without having to worry about Madi dropping toys on the ground. If you’re wondering where the “Italian Enchiladas” part of the title comes from, this would be it… Rebecca had me try a bite of her Chicken Cannelloni (we ended up swapping half of hers for half of my Chicken Parmesan because we’re funny like that) and it was excellent. We decided that Chicken Cannelloni was the equivalent of Italian Enchiladas. Italiant restaurateurs in the state of Texas listen up…calling a cannelloni dish “Italian Enchiladas” is a GOLD MINE! I’m going to trademark it…

After dinner (where, ironically, we were waited on by a real live opera singer, who, even more ironically, was friends with one of the 2 people actually playing the Phantom), it was off to the play musical! On the way over, Rebecca filled me in on the story a little bit and got me all ready for my first experience with the musical. She informed me that there would be some explosions, which always makes for a good time! She also told me that, just so I could sort of keep track of time, when I saw the swordfight scene starting, that meant we were getting close to the end…

She was right about the explosions! Right off the bat there was an exploding chandelier and there were lots of other great effects. The musical aspect was interesting, but to be completely honest, I really couldn’t understand 90% of what they were saying. Even though I had trouble understanding the words, Rebecca was right and I could pretty much get a good idea of what was going on by watching them interact. Well into the second act, I could feel the tension between the Phantom (who referred to himself as the “O.G.“, which I found funny) and Raoul, I knew the swordfight scene must be close and started watching for it. Everytime the Phantom went around behind one of the props on stage, I kept thinking that he was going to pull out a sword and start swinging (he’d already hung Raoul, who strangely enough was hanging completely still, had already done the post-hanging nerve twitches but then suddently burst back into song). Even as Raoul and Christine (are you impressed yet?) were floating away singing to each other about how they loved each other and they were on a boat and it was dark and stuff, the Phantom was lying on the floor watching them and I was still thinking, “OK, he’s going to get up, grab his sword, swim up to the boat and the fight will be on!” Instead, the curtains dropped and everyone stood up to clap. You see, I’d been duped…  It turns out there IS NO SWORD FIGHT SCENE IN PHANTOM OF THE OPERA!

Other than there being no real fight scene (though the Phantom did dance around Raoul as he hung him), I really did have a great time.  I’ve been to plays before, but nothing of this sort of magnitude when it came to production…  The effects really were amazing…  Several of the backdrops and sets really did look very real.  I’d definitely be willing to go to another musical, but I’m going to do my research regarding fight scenes, profanity and gratuitous nudity ahead of time!

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