Ear for Art

At the recent Opera, Pagliacci in Pittsburgh, at the Benedum Theatre, before the curtain rose, this nice elderly man seated next to me proceeds to tell me that he just got a new hearing aid and that he cannot hear the soprano as she sings, we chat about this and says he has bad hearing. I tell him that mine could be better and that I had tinnitus, and he remarks that he thought my pronunciation was incorrect, and that he had a ringing in his ears. I replied that Van Gogh had cut off his ear because of that same malady. "No," he replied, "it was his lost love that gave him that cause."