Opera, E-mail, and Documentary Shorts

I have three questions for y’all today, dear readers.

Opera Recommendations — Yesterday (before the Academy Awards love-fest) I watched the PBS “Great Performances” recording of the Met’s staging of Donizetti’s “Anna Bolena.” Wow, that was great!

Watch GP at the Met: Anna Bolena on PBS. See more from Great Performances.

(The New York Times has a a better excerpt. You know, one with music.)

My exposure to opera is (um) rather limited. I’ve listened to all of “La Traviata” and selections from some Mozart and Wagner operas, but that’s pretty much it. What I’ve heard, I like—and I’ve always meant to listen to more of it—but I’ve always been super-overwhelmed by the magnitude of the selection at the library.

Do you have any favorites that you might suggest?

E-mail to Actions — I won’t hide my skepticism about e-mail. Of course it has its good parts, but I struggle with converting the actions that are contained (hiding?) in all of those messages into items on my To Do list. How do you take all of the important parts of e-mail and turn them into easy-to-remember, actionable things?

Documentary Shorts — Lisa and I watched a few hours of Oscar-nominated short films Saturday night. There were a lot of good films there in both the animated and live-action categories. And you can find collections of both of them on iTunes. Yay! (See the previous links.)

But where can I find the documentary shorts? Anyone know?