A clockwork butterfly

Butterfly is married

Tonight, as regular as clockwork, a couple of minutes after 8pm I heard through my closed windows, the dull thud, thud, thud of fireworks going off. For the past three weeks, Tuesday to Sunday inclusive, those fireworks have sounded at virtually the same time. It is the moment that Butterfly marries her Pinkerton.

Opera on the Harbour is being staged adjacent to the Botanic Gardens about four kilometres from my home, I guess, as the crow flies. Each of the three outdoor opera seasons has had fireworks as an added inducement. In the first year the fireworks concluded the performance of La Traviata. The second year the fireworks came early in the final act of Carmen. This year the fireworks come at the earliest time of the evening; that point in Act 1 of Madama Butterfly when Butterfly has married Lieutenant Pinkerton.

This year the season has been marred by rain. It rained the night I attended and it rained tonight and it has rained on many of the nights. I wondered whether the performance could continue the night I attended and marvelled that it did and I have marvelled on subsequent nights that the performance was going ahead in even heavier, steadier rain. The sound of the fireworks told me so. Regularly at a couple of minutes past 8pm.

Tomorrow night is the final scheduled night. More rain is forecast. I won't be home at 8pm to hear that thud, thud, thud as I have a play to attend. I may have heard my last Opera on the Harbour fireworks as the gossip is that the seasons will not continue. If so, I will miss those fireworks but the compensation is that there seem so many marketing and special occasion excuses for fireworks on other nights of the year.