It’s the color I chose for my morning mug of tea, the color of my favorite ring, also. Turquoise never fails to bring me joy. It was of course the color of Mrs. Abbott’s new swimming pool at Linwood in 1970. It is also the luminous first memory of that wide-open double window out to the Mediterranean which welcomed me to my first engagement with the Opéra de Nice, the same apartment that was inhabited by Henri Matisse himself, and inspired many of his paintings. The sea shimmered with a stillness that literally took my breath, with that indescribable azure tone that reflected back the bright cloudless sky that occurs in February at around noon on la côte d’azur, or as we say, the Riviera. I used that apartment many times during eleven engagements in that wonderful city. It is a color often employed by the great artists, and has even brought me to tears, the day when I returned to the Louvre, my vision restored after two cataract removals, viewing The Coronation of the Virgin by Fra Angelico as if for the first time (the brilliance of this hue is particularly affected by the browning of an aging cataract which hit me already in my fifties). Turquoise makes me think of the brisk morning skies Jacques and I enjoyed at the 2000-foot altitude in Santa Fe, New Mexico, taking advantage of a track at the gym across the street from our rental home during a long series of Don Giovanni. My ring, purchased for myself on a lonely St. Valentine’s Day in Portland, Oregon during a series of Normas, was made by an artisan who encrusted several pieces to create a perfectly smooth circumference, set in Sterling silver. I was told that the color enhanced nicely my skin tone, and I paid without hesitation. Down in Brazil, everyone thinks I bought it there, where the stone also abounds. In New York, the ring once flew off my right hand during an expansive operatic gesture while uninhibitedly rehearsing alone before my next gig. It bounced and slid for approximately fifteen yards before rolling and gently unwinding to a stop under the grand piano in Rehearsal Room C at the Met. I was grateful to be alone. Scattered across the expanse of the contrasting oak wood floor, shattered bits of stone were hastily picked up and wrapped in a Kleenex, and two hours later I was seen hunched over my knees in the Air France Lounge at JFK, craftily gluing those little shards back into place before my flight to Paris. It isn’t perfect. But I didn’t do a bad job, and sometimes I get the most compliments for this piece when the make-shift mosaic work shows up on the top of the ring… and in increasing ways, evoking the memories of having lived several lives in one, it brings me joy.