William Tell

Last Saturday's matinee at the Metropolitan Opera was a performance of Rossini's William Tell. During an intermission a man was seen sprinkling a white powder around the orchestra pit which caused alarm and a cancelling of the remainder of the opera. The perpetrator explained it was the ashes of a friend and opera lover and part of his deal with the deceased to leave bits of him in all the opera houses he would visit. When I hear the William Tell Overture I think of that masked stranger on the white horse who might have "unmasked" the sprinkler and dissuaded him before he made an "ash" of himself.
tjs