Last summer, my father ordered tickets for 8 operas during the 2008-2009 Met season. How optimistic that was. It makes me want to cry. I remember seeing the page of the Met brochure with his circlings of the operas he wanted to see.

When he was in the hospital last August he did say something like, "You guys are going to have to use those opera tickets."

We wouldn’t even discuss it. It felt too morbid, too unbearable. I remember looking away.

The opera tickets have become a bittersweet reminder of my dad’s influence. Every few weeks or so we figure out who gets to go.

Hepcat has been to the most operas so far. He saw Faust with my stepmother, Queen of Spades with my sister and Thais with me.

My father’s seats are in the Family Circle. He swore by those seats; the sound is very good up there even though it’s miles from the stage. For decades my maternal grandparents had season tickets in the middle of the orchestra but those were dropped a few years back.So as a family, we’re very spoiled about our seating at the Met. Still, my father liked those Family Circle seats.

"You know how he liked a bargain," Hepcat said last night as we trudged up the stairs. But it’s actually quite fun up there.

Thais is a late 19th century French opera by Massenet about a beautiful courtesan who is convinced by a monk to take the path of chastity and become a nun.

It is a lyrical and wrenching portrait of a woman, who is  attached to the worldly notion of herself as an earthly and sensuous beauty — a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown who literally sees the light.

Trouble is, the monk falls in love with her…

Listening to the swooningly romantic music — sung by the great Renee Fleming — I was just dumbstruck by the power of this opera. At one point there’s a long and exquisite violin solo, it’s called the Meditation, that reminded me of something in a Charlie Chaplin film like City Lights.

Oh there was also a sexy belly dance and a kinky kiss on the lips between the belly dancer and a female singer.

So it was with joy not sadness that we sat in my father’s seats taking in the gorgeous singing, the stunning scenery and the sweeping lyricism of this opera, a Met Premiere.

I imagined my father circling this opera in that brochure: it was obviously something he wanted to see (the fact that it is rarely performed at the Met? Renee Fleming? Something else?)

I can’t say for sure what he would have said about it: his commentary was always informed and sometimes surprising.

But somehow I think he would have swooned over the voice of Diva Fleming and that violin solo that had me at hello.

Gorgeous.