She’s a Ride-or-Die Chick

One of the most exhilarating experiences in life is careening down Big Bend with Ride of the Valkyries thundering out of the car’s sound system. This is not some Apocalypse Now death-fantasy – this is life in the face of death, a keen awareness that right at this very moment, it’s good to be among the living. And it’s got that heavy metal back-end working for it, which is always a plus. Kelly Kaduce, familiar to devotees of Opera Theatre St. Louis as Anna Karenina and Jane Eyre, performs Wagner’s smash hit, along with selections from Verdi and Puccini, today at 2 p.m. at the Touhill Performing Art Center on the University of Missouri-St. Louis campus (1 University Drive at Natural Bridge Road; 314-516-4949 or www.touhill.org) with James Gaffigan conducting the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. Look for the guy in the plastic horned helmet air-conducting the brass in the back of the theater – that’ll be me. Tickets are $15 to $35.
Sun., Jan. 11, 2009