Today is Groundhog Day. I don’t know what day it is when you’re reading this, but as I write, it’s Groundhog Day. For the record, Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow, promising an early spring. Spring is a time of renewal, so an early spring is welcome. It’s an opening to renew your life. Phil Connors does that in the movie Groundhog Day.

TCM is running a marathon of the movie. Like the day in the movie, it’s running over and over. It’s a funny movie and one with philosophical implications. What if there were no consequences for our actions?

On February 1, Pittsburgh weatherman Phil Connors (Bill Murray) assures his viewers that the impending snowstorm will miss the area. He is assigned to cover the annual Groundhog Day festivities in Punxsutawney. He hates the assignment and the local “hicks.”

Phil his new producer, Rita Hanson (Andie McDowell), and his cameraman Larry (Chris Elliot, son of Bob Elliot of Bob and Ray), head for Punxsutawney. Phil wakes up in his room in the inn with Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe” on the radio. He goes out and does a half-hearted report on the groundhog festivities. The blizzard strikes and he and his crew are stuck in Punxsutawney.

When Phil wakes up, it’s Groundhog Day. The same song on the radio, the same banter from the DJ. Phil realizes he’s stuck in a time loop. He confides this to Rita. He winds up talking to a psychologist. Nobody can explain it. He gets drunk. The next morning, he awakes to the same song and the same banter. Phil realizes that since he’s living the same day over and over, there are no consequences for his actions.

He gets drunk, indulges in binge eating, one night stands, and other dangerous activities, and tries to seduce Rita, who rebuffs him. He tries to explain the situation again, predicting events accurately. Rita encourages him to think of the time loop as a blessing, not a curse. Phil decides to use his knowledge gained from the time loop to change himself and do good.

He learns to play the piano. He learns French. He saves people from deadly accidents. He does a report on the Groundhog Day festivities so eloquently that everyone else stops to listen. He also realizes that he is developing real feelings for Rita.

Rita bids for Phil at a charity bachelor auction. He creates an ice sculpture of her and tells her that he’s happy even if he’s stuck in the loop because he loves her. They kiss.

Phil wakes up the next morning to “I Got You Babe” but different banter from the DJ and Rita in bed next to him. He is finally out of the time loop.

What do we learn from Phil’s experience in the time loop? If you’re stuck, love is the way out. We can choose to take an opportunity to do good and spread love, or we can indulge in destructive choices that will keep us stuck in the same thing over and over. It’s a choice, always, and the way out is to choose love.

Groundhog Day is a fun, enjoyable movie, appropriate for the occasion, and teaches us useful lessons. I recommend it. Even if it’s not Groundhog Day.

If you’ve read my articles for a while, you know that one of my favorite things is the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD. Suzanne loved to go and I loved to go with her. I have continued to attend whenever possible.

Today I saw Fedora, an opera from the 1890s based on an 1882 play. It starred Sonia Yoncheva in the title role, Piotr Beczala as Count Loris Ipanov, Rosa Feola as Countess Olga, and Lucas Meacham as the diplomat DeSeriex. A wonderful cast of very talented performers. It had not been performed at teh Met in a quarter of a century until this run.

There will be encore showings on Wednesday, January 18, at 1:00 PM and 6:30 PM.

Princess Fedora is about to marry Count Vladimir Andrejevich, who is bankrupt from chasing women and gambling. She arrives at Count Vladimir’s place to find him out. Finally, as she sings of her love for him, he is brought in, mortally wounded. It is immediately suspected that Count Vladimir’s neighbor, Count Loris Ipanov, a suspected Nihilist sympathizer, was probably the assassin.

DeSiriex, a French diplomat, and the police inspector, Gretch, plan to investigate. Fedora swears on the (fancy) cross she is wearing that Count Vladimir’s death will be avenged.

Fedora goes to Paris, following Ipanov, to avenge Vladimir’s death. There is a reception at Fedora’s house where her friend, Countess Olga, brings a Polish pianist. Ipanov arrives and declares his love for Fedora. She tells him she is returning to Russia the next day. Ipanov protests that he is unable to go with her as he is exiled from Russia. He confesses to killing Vladimir.

Fedora tells Ipanov to meet her in an hour and she dismisses the party. She writes a letter to the Chief of the Imperial Police in Russia accusing Ipanov of murder.

Ipanov returns and tells her the story of how Vladimir betrayed her with Loris’s wife. He caught them and tried to stop them. Vladimir fired at Ipanov, and Ipanov returned fire, killing Vladimir. Fedora is devastated at Vladimir’s betrayal and convinces Ipanov to spend the night with her. She has fallen in love with him.

At Fedora’s Swiss villa, Ipanov and Fedora are lovers. Olga is also there. She has been betrayed by her Polish piano player. DeSeriex shows up and invites Olga to go riding with him.

DeSeriex tells Fedora that the Imperial Police picked up one of the killer’s accomplices, sent him to a prison by the Neva River, and he drowned slowly in a flood. The accomplice is Ipanov’s brother. On hearing the news, his mother had collapsed and died. Fedora realizes that her letter got them killed.

Ipanov receives a letter informing that his mother and brother have died and the cause was a woman living in Paris who wrote to the Imperial Police. Fedora, in a roundabout way, confesses to writing the letter. Ipanov denounces her and vows revenge, as she begs for his forgiveness.

Fedora takes the poison she has in her cross and dies. As she is dying, she confesses her love for Ipanov and he forgives her. She dies.

What can we learn from Fedora? We learn how destructive jealousy is. It is a poison that can destroy lives. So is betrayal.

Fedora’s letter is written before she has the full story. I’m sure that she would not have written it if she had had the full story. Her impulsiveness and desire for vengeance take two lives.

Finally, we learn about forgiveness and the power of love. Love and forgiveness ultimately emerge victorious in Fedora, despite the ruination of at least three human lives. Forgiveness releases the other person, but much more importantly, it releases us. This winds up being the focal point and end point of Fedora.

A wonderful opera, well sung. And the music was beautiful too. A wonderful example of verismo opera. I recommend it. Catch the encore presentation if you can.

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” — Henry David Thoreau

Suzanne and I have long been fans of the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD. Today I saw the new opera The Hours, based on the 1998 novel and 2002 movie of the same title. The roles played in the movie by Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, and Julianne Moore, are here sung by Renee Fleming, Joyce DiDonato, and Kelli O’Hara respectively.

The Hours tells three stories at once, the stories of three women in three different locales and time periods who share a common sense of desperation. Virginia Woolf, sung by DiDonato, is struggling to write her novel Mrs. Dalloway. She is wrestling with her inner Monsters, as her husband calls them, and she cannot seem to find an opening line or decide on her ending. Like Mrs. Dalloway, The Hours takes place over a single day — actually three of them, in the three different places and times, but one single day of each woman’s life.

For those who do not know the novel, Mrs. Dalloway’s first name is Clarissa and she is planning a party. This is one of the connections in The Hours, as Renee Fleming’s character, Clarissa Vaughan, is a lesbian editor in 1990s New York planning a party for her “more than best friend” Richard, an author and poet who is dying of AIDS. Richard is getting an award. (“I’m getting an award because I’m dying,” he says.) Richard sometimes teasingly refers to Clarissa as Mrs. Dalloway.

O’Hara sings the role of Laura Brown, a housewife in 1949 Los Angeles. She lives with her husband and son and she has a baby on the way. She escapes her desperate life by reading. At the time we meet her, she is reading Mrs. Dalloway.

The opera weaves the three women’s stories together in a way the novel and movie can’t. There are scenes where we see Laura Brown in LA reading aloud the very words we see Virginia Woolf in 1920s London struggling to write. The staging blends their voices magnificently.

At various points in the opera, Woolf sings that “someone must die by the end of the day.” (Her novel takes place over the course of one day.) Well, by the end of this opera, someone has, and it leads to a surprising connection at the end.

This is one of many places where you get a sense of foreboding and a sense from the score and the libretto that the women are troubled, almost expecting something to happen. This is a good reminder of the power of our thought. And we also get to feel the love and loss in the lives of the three women.

This is a fascinating work. The score is a bit modernist for my taste, but it contributes to the overall picture of these interesting characters. There is an encore showing this coming Wednesday evening at your local movie theater.