…until the fat lady sings!
🎩 Baron von Münchhausen at the Royal Opera
Allow me to report, dear Poul, that I was personally present the evening this immortal phrase entered human history.
It was my first visit to the Royal Opera.
I had arrived directly from a minor diplomatic mission involving a runaway cannonball and a misunderstanding with a Bulgarian tenor, so I confess my attention wandered.
The performance was… long.
The orchestra thundered, the chorus wailed, and a gentleman behind me unwrapped caramels with the patience of geological time.
Then suddenly —
a colossal musical explosion!
Trumpets! Drums! A heroic duet!
The entire hall shook as though Zeus himself had paid for a ticket.
Naturally, I rose to my feet.
“Well,” I declared quietly to no one in particular,
“magnificent. Over at last.”
I adjusted my monocle and prepared to depart.
At that precise moment, a stern gentleman beside me — clearly a veteran of many operatic campaigns — seized my sleeve and whispered with deadly seriousness:
> “Baron. Sit down.
Be quiet.
It is not over… until the fat lady sings.”
I froze.
“Fat lady?” I murmured. “There is yet another?”
He nodded gravely toward the stage.
From somewhere deep behind the scenery came a rumble —
like a glacier clearing its throat.
Then she appeared.
A soprano of such cosmic magnitude that gravity itself took notes.
She inhaled — the chandeliers trembled.
She sang — time briefly stopped to listen.
When she finished, the universe concluded.
The opera ended.
Three minor wars paused out of respect.
I turned to the gentleman.
“My good sir,” I said,
“you have taught me a principle that shall guide all future adventures.”
And since that night I have never assumed anything is finished
until the final voice has spoken.
Not battles.
Not journeys.
Not revolutions.
Not even conversations with philosophers, physicists, or AI systems.
Because, my dear Poul —
Until the fat lady sings, reality itself remains in rehearsal.
