When I got out of the army, in 1960, the first thing I did with my mustering out money was to buy season tickets to the opera. It’s fifty-seven years later, and I’ve never missed a season. Back then, with younger eyes, I peered through my dad’s binoculars, miles away from the stage, in the upper balcony. Now, I sit in the box that we took to give John’s knees a break.
He felt, as I do, that opera combines the best elements of a good play, the symphony, the ballet, a song fest, and the circus, all rolled into one big, exhilarating stew. Not every time, but often enough that it kept us coming back for more. The singers are slimmer now, (I remember a Samson and Delilah where the leads were so tubby they couldn’t reach around each other to embrace), the sets are less stagy and more dynamic, and the surtitles now leave no mystery as to what’s being sung.
I confess that sometimes, after an especially good dinner, the lights would go down and John or I would nod off for a bit, but we knew how to gently nudge each other back to consciousness before any snoring commenced. We awoke to hear the finest voices of several generations: Leontyne Price, Birgit Nillson, Luciano Pavarotti, Joan Sutherland, Marilyn Horne, Renee Fleming, and so many more.
Like so much else, the opera is not the same without John to turn to and say “How about that?” My opera companions now are a patchwork of friends ranging from those who tolerate it to humor me to those with some actual enthusiasm for the music, but there’s no one who needs to be there the way John and I did. I’ll keep up the tickets for now; he’d want me to, but I’d love to know what he’d have thought of what went on last Sunday.
The opera was Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice. I’d seen it several times, but was looking forward to this production because it was a collaboration with the Joffrey Ballet which I greatly admire. I sense I’m in the minority on this, but I felt too much of the singing was stripped away to make room for dancing, dancing, and then some more dancing. It was all very prettily done, though not in a way that I felt supported the plot, but the ending killed me, and not in a good way. The last aria had been sung, and all was said and done, “but wait! there’s more!” Dancers in green scampered about, tossing each other to and fro. The music swelled as if to a final cadence, but no, dancers in purple chased them off stage and the tossing continued. The music died out. It seemed the curtain was about to fall, but no, the music swelled again and the greenies were back at it. At last, they wound down, seeming spent. My mitts were up ready to applaud, but no, here come the purple people dashing back in for some more tossing. And so it went. I needed badly to be able to turn to John and say “How about that?”
Me Now 