A night at the opera

I was home on leave from the army. It was the fall of 1959. Warren Quinn had an extra ticket to Madama Butterfly, with Leontyne Price in the title role. It was Warren, one of my best friends at South Shore high, who first opened my ears to classical music. My leave time was limited, but I wasn’t going to turn down the opportunity to spend time in his company. I had a crush on him then, though he wouldn’t find that out for about another thirty years. We sat in the nosebleed section of the upper balcony, but the voices, unmiked in those days, were strong, the acoustics perfect, and the music sublime. I thought, “where has this been all my life?” By January, I was a civilian again and used some of my mustering out pay to buy season tickets. I’ve held them ever since and don’t plan to give them up. They are a central pillar of my well being, and, as Charlton Heston said of his guns, they’ll have to tear them from my cold, dead hand.

It’s tickets plural because it means so much more if there’s someone in the next seat to whom you can turn to share your exhilaration or dismay. There’s always been someone, friends of both sexes, boyfriends, relatives, co-workers, college classmates, and then, for years and years, John. That next seat has never been empty until the other night.

It’s less easy now to interest company when they know it means opera. What was once a familiar aspect of popular culture has become alien, to be approached, if at all, with dread and foreboding. Depending on your age, you may find this hard to believe, but there really was a time when mass audiences found it agreeable at the movies when a character would break out with an aria. The Great Caruso was one of the biggest box office hits of the ’50’s. Late night talk show audiences used not only to recognize but welcome opera stars like Marilyn Horne and Beverly Sills. No more. Few of my friends think of opera as entertainment. Times change, and with myriad options for amusement, it becomes easy and comfortable to splinter off into narrow cultural niches, excluding all but the tried and tried and tried . . . and true.

This weekend, it was not disinterest, but illness that felled first a relative and then a friend and had me heading off to the opera by myself. For reasons I’ve recounted in previous blogs, I was not driving, but had booked a car. I had told them a car would do; I had no need of a limo. I’d have been content to squeeze into a smart car. What rolled up instead, and far too early, was the longest, blackest Cadillac I’d ever seen. The driver ushered me into the back and told me if I needed anything along the way, or a pit stop, to let him know. He locked my door and took the driver’s seat, several miles away. The windows were steamed up. I could see nothing outside. The interior was luxurious. And black. A couple of times, I tried to speak to the driver just to pierce the heavy silence. He couldn’t hear me. I’d forgotten my bullhorn. So much for pit stops.

I began to feel peculiarly entombed, in a coffin on wheels, whizzing toward a restaurant which wouldn’t be open when I got there. Where were the traffic jams? the construction? No, my speed jockey knew every possible shortcut. He dropped me off in the rain with half an hour to kill, and nowhere to kill it. I entered the hallway outside Rivers where there was no place to sit, just walls. Well, why would anyone come this early? But God bless Yolanda, the hostess. She spotted me and insisted I come in. “We’re not open yet, but this is a nasty night, Mr. Kingsmill. You need some wine. Let me get you to a table.” I was brought not only wine, but bread and butter, water, and the company of two of my favorite servers, Kelly and Jason. Sometimes, I feel truly and undeservedly blessed. No, not just sometimes.

Around five, I was joined by Mike and Julie, long time opera buddies. Mike was getting over a cold, but they hadn’t wanted me to dine alone any more than I wanted to. Too much time for solitary reflection, and it was a treat to have this amusing pair all to myself. After supper, I decided not to let my extra ticket go to waste, and offered it to Yolanda, in case she could get away, which she had once been able to when John got sick. Evidently, she couldn’t this time, for just as the lights went down in the auditorium, the seat I’d saved for her in the box was taken by a pretty young lady who I assume is a Rivers employee. Fine.

Except it wasn’t. She seemed befuddled. Of course, the plot of Il Trovatore is enough to befuddle anyone. The Marx Brothers made hilarious use of it in A Night at the Opera. But the singing was full-throated and rapturous, so much so that each aria and chorus were greeted with thunderous ovations. But not by our millennial newcomer. Not only did she not applaud, she regarded those of us who were doing so with a wary expression of WTF? She fled at intermission and won’t be back. I had noticed a bag lady outside the theater who might have welcomed a few warm hours inside, even if it meant an opera. Next time.

When my driver tried to install me once more in the rear of my hearse, I asked if it would be okay if I sat up front with him. It was. It was a lot less lonesome, and he turned out to be nice.

 

Oh, those dancing feet!

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?”