Faithful reader Sadie Salome writes, “Don’t know if you saw last night’s marketing email from the Met promoting their Valentine’s Day e-card website: “This Valentine’s day fall in love at the Met Opera.” Well, I did not like their schmaltzy selection of cards, so I made some of my own from my favorite romantic opera moments.”

La Cieca challenges the cher public to create their own operatically-themed Valentine’s Day cards, the more offbeat or macabre the better. You can either post a link to your designed card in the comments section or, if that’s a bit complicated for you, simply email your finished card to [email protected]. (If you’re emailing your card, please remind La Cieca of your parterre screen name in the body of the email!)

The finest Valentine’s sentiment received by midnight, February 13 will be prominently featured on parterre.com and the designer will receive a grab-bag of recent operatic releases.