Innumerable movies -- and a Pogues song -- have rammed home the connection between Manhattan and Christmas and they really do do it in style. The cold can literally take your breath away, the ice rink at the Rockefeller Center is a bun-fight, but in a good way, especially after dark, and the green and red lighting theme on the Empire State Building turns it into a Christmas tree for the whole city. Even the incessant Christmas music in every shop, hotel lobby and other public space stays on the right side of the atmospheric/irritating divide. Or at least it does for a few days.
For younger kids, the Children's Museum of Manhattan is a short walk away on 83rd St but the 1600㎡ of the Lincoln Centre complex, the world's largest performing arts centre, is pretty child-friendly too. It is home to not only the Metropolitan Opera but also the Juilliard music school, the New York City Ballet, Opera and Philharmonic orchestra, among many other arts institutions. But if that's not enough classical music then it's just a 10-minute walk to Carnegie Hall on 57th St.
The Zeffirelli La Boheme is still a stalwart of the Met programme and tickets are straightforwardly available on the Internet at prices comparable to London.
Loretta and Ronny were dressed to the nines for their Met date (incidentally, it's worth keeping an eye on the erratic comings and goings of the gray patches in Cher's hair as the continuity goes awry in the movie). The only source of anxiety was a potentially aria-busting cough developed by our daughter, Connie, in the hours before the performance. But we needn't have worried. The house was packed with people like Cher's father from the film -- a wealthy owner of a plumbing firm who takes his mistress to the opera -- and they seemed to have little compunction about shuffling around, sneezing and occasionally talking, which more than drowned out my daughter's occasional Mimi-like weak coughs.
The seat-back screens showing subtitles made life easier for the children and the opportunity for sugar-infusion via a dessert from the restaurant in the second interval kept us all awake, despite the jet-lag, to the end of the opera, and of Mimi. Leaving the Met, the moon was out. Maybe not as spectacularly huge in the sky as the moon that dominated the movie, but good enough for us.
The movie's soundtrack is split between Puccini and some Italian American classics, and as we walked up Broadway how could we not join in with Dino? Altogether now, "When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore."
Getting there:
nThe average temperature in New York for December is between -1℃ and 5℃.
A return flight with Cathay Pacific costs NT$31,600 including tax from Champion Travel (02) 2516 5189. Booking online with www.eztravel.com.tw, Northwest Airlines has flights at NT$27,890 excluding airport tax.
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