Wednesday Dave and I celebrated our nineteenth anniversary.

When I was writing my libretto for Stories by Hoffmann, I needed to write a lyric for Hoffmann to sing to Giulietta that would express his yearning for a kind of love that could follow all the disillusions he had suffered with his first two loves. (Unfortunately, the poor guy has his worst disillusionment of all still ahead of him, because Giulietta is planning to betray him in the most devastating way possible, but he doesn’t know this yet and his words to Giulietta have to be deeply sincere.) I found the right words for Hoffmann when I thought about my own relationship with Dave. Hoffmann’s lyric ends:

A smile that knows regret,
A laughter laced with rue,
A heart both wise and true:
All these I’ve found in you.

More than anything else I’ve written, those four lines are for Dave.