Opera outdoors, 21 June

About a thousand people gathered on a balmy and clear Sunday to listen to some opera at the Palm Valley at the Botanic Gardens.

Most came with picnic baskets, nibbled on cheese, sipped their wine and caught up on gossip between Delibes and Donizetti, while the kids ran around the trees. It really was an enchanted evening.

I do hope this is going to be a regular event, and also that the singers wear something bright and colourful the next time around; we could barely see them and we weren't sitting too far away.

If there is going to be another edition, we also hope to hear about it in advance. One way would have been more signs in the gardens itself. There were benches all around advertising the garden festival which is more than a month away and not a single sign about Opera in the Park, not even one piddly directional sign.

Update on Friday, June 27, 2008 at 12:22AM by MamaSez

While on the Botanics, feeding the ducks and turles at the eco lake - or for that matter in many water bodies here - is a popular pastime for kids. I just remembered a friend saying that these must be the best-fed ducks and turtles in Singapore. And I wonder how many folks throw in appropriate food rather than just bits of bread. The monkeys around Macritchie are said to have become this aggressive because of people feeding them. I wonder what effect all the food thrown into the water has on the ducks and turtles at the eco lake.