This post would have a clever title if "It's a small world" had better lyrics

I've written before about what a tiny world the field of opera is, how you're constantly seeing all the same people and how everyone's connected by far fewer than six degrees. Now that I've been doing this for a while, I don't even get excited anymore when I meet someone and find that we have people in common. Of course we do.

Lately, though, there have been a series of coincidental connections that qualify as something out of the ordinary, and I'm completely delighted by them.

In a conversation with a colleague, I discovered that he went to graduate school with the very first director I ever worked with, back when I played Molly in Annie, circa 1989.

The director I'm assisting right now arrived at the Met and found out that a member of our Giovanni music staff is actually his neighbor in Cornwall—their properties border each other…and they've never met before.

Last week I was talking to a soprano in our cast, and it turned out our fathers went to music school in Germany together, at a tiny school of 50 students.

Poetic conclusions are begging to be drawn here. Mostly, though, these discoveries just make me want to talk to people more, to take the time to find out where they come from and where they've been. I want to make a collection of these tenuous threads that are holding us together.

What's amazing you these days?