The Sunday afternoon scene outside the San Francisco Opera House for the final performance of the season's opening ballet, Swan Lake. Vanessa Zahorian danced a vigorous, malicious, athletic Black Swan, earning a standing ovation and compensating considerably for a somewhat heavy and unconvincing (though securely executed) White Swan.
The audience was thick with dressed-up little girls and their chaperons. During one of the intermissions my friend and I went out onto the front balcony and admired City Hall on the other side of Van Ness Avenue, shining in the sun and surrounded by greener-than-usual lawns after many recent rains.
