Live Opera Again!

Ann has brought many grand gifts into my life, among them the joy of sailboat gunkholing in the Salish Sea, the exhaustions of biking (back before my wobblies,) the magic of cross-country skate skiing in The Methow and Sun Valley, the majesties of mountain hiking in the Dolomites and Cascades, and my growing appreciation of Opera.  Those first ones are fast becoming memories as age overwhelms us, but we can still sit and watch and listen and learn.

Live Opera Again!

Ann and I relished return of live performance, first in Naples in June and here in Seattle earlier this month.

Ann awaits overture, Teatro San
Carlo, Naples (2022)

In Naples, we snagged spur of the moment tix to Evgenii Onegin, by Ćajkovskij, as they spell him. We were headed out of our hotel in Galleria Umberto to embark on a walking tour of Naples and there, right across the street: Teatro de San Carlo.  Yes, the season was on. Yes, they were performing during our stay. Yes, that very evening in fact. Yes, they had seats available.

It was a wonderful production: imaginative staging; full complement of chorus and orchestra; great casting in character, i.e. youthful and attractive; good acting; three fine voices singing Tatyana, Evgenii, and Lenski. Based on Pushkin’s novel, Onegin explores the pettiness of social conventions, rejection, remorse and loss. Super-titles in Italian and English. (Unlike once in Aix en-Provence, listening to Janacek’s Prihody Iisky Bystrousky, The Clever Little Vixen, sung in Czech while struggling to read super-titles in French!) In Naples, the sitting bit was via velvet upholstered armchairs.

1960 500 -- Still Tearing About (2022) 

Seattle’s return to McCaw Hall after a two year hiatus was also wonderful: L’elisir d’amore, The Elixir of Love, by Gaetano Donizetti. It is an over-the-top, slapstick opera buffa with one redeeming feature, Nemarino’s thrilling tenor aria, Una Furtiva Lagrima. In the end, off he and Adina went in his MG Midget; better had it been a period FIAT 500, like those in which we raced about Modica last April. And Dr. Dulcamara is left to scam the gullible villagers en masse (just as Dr. Oz is wont to do this November in Pennsylvania.)

The Met Live in HD

Don’t misunderstand me: virtual productions can be thrilling, too, but in a different way. Over the past few years, Ann and I have spent many a Saturday morning in movie houses watching The Met Live in HD: real-time, Saturday matinee Metropolitan Opera productions satellite beamed around the world into local theatres and onto their large screens. It’s a completely different experience from live attendance: multi-camera angles and close-ups; backstage interviews with principals during intermissions; and watching scrambling but professional stagehands whisk away the cathedral and install a chandelier-lighted ballroom in those twenty minutes between acts. You watch over the shoulder of the production chief and hear her or his call “Maestro to the podium, please; Maestro to the podium” and you’re off on another voyage into make believe, emotion and music. 

Since launched in 2006, Met Live in HD has introduced tens of thousands to opera, sold 28million tickets in 70 countries around the world, and generated around $25mm gross for the cash strapped Met each season. More important, it has changed opera production forever. Where once a 280 pound, 44-year-old soprano with stunning voice could get away with playing svelte, sixteen-year-olds Isolde or Juliette because the audience was there for her voice and sat a long way back from the stage. But today’s audiences, with those close-ups, in addition to superb singing, demand looking the role, acting skills, and beauty.

 . . . as Carmen

Garanca -- diva . . .

And beauties we get. Eliña Garanĉa

as Carmen, no dessert tart, she, but one for whom we would desert.
Natalie Dessay as Donizetti’s Lucia sprawled head down at the bottom of the staircase in the mad scene, singing her soul out.  And, of course, Renee Fleming singing anybody, anything.

Renee Fleming

(These from the web.)

Whether fan or not, when the winter blahs set in, take a Saturday morning with The Met. Next up: Medea, Oct.22^nd. Check https://www.metopera.org/season/in-cinemas/ to find your local venue.

Oh, those Austrians

Liza, left; Corriell, right. Salzburg (2010)

“Renee Fleming” -- she brings back memories of 2010 in Vienna. We took granddaughters Corriell and Liza Stoner on their first trip to Europe. We chose Austria, figuring that they would tick off London, Paris, Rome and Berlin on their own in another few years.  Good choice: scenery, art, history, and schokolade.

In Vienna one morning, Ann spotted a Staatsoper poster for Renee Fleming appearing that night in Strauss’ Capriccio. It was, of course, SRO, but Fleming is tops among Ann’s favorites; would the American teenage sisters like to try opera? Sure!

To buy one of Staatsoper’s treasured 150 SRO tickets, one physically has to be present in line by late afternoon, and have passed inspection of the uniformed Line-Marshall policing shorts, bare feet, mini-skirts, tank tops male or female, and other touristy no-nos. Ann and I were safely in line at around #25 or so and had passed Gimlet Eye’s inspection, but the girls who had gone off on their own that afternoon were nowhere to be seen. Time grew short, anxiety grew, the SRO doors opened and in we filed to claim our spots on the tiers. Each tier has a railing for your support and on which is mounted a little screen for digital display of sub-titles in the language of your choice. We had given up on the Stoner gals and then, gaily greeting us, came care-free Corriell and Liza holding tickets # 149 and 150!

Once the SRO’s are in place, there is quite a period before doors are opened for seated attendees – you don’t want patrons mixing with SRO riff-raff, afterall. We left a sweater draped over the rail to hold our spots, gathered the girls and went off to the restaurant for a snack. I was self-conscious because we had not planned for any dress-up times on this trip, so I had no sport coat much less a dress shirt and tie. But with my black jeans, a pair of black loafers and a black turtleneck, I passed. I thought.

Sitting nearby in the restaurant was an elderly, aristocratic couple, he mustachioed and in white tie and tux. As he passed our table to exit, he paused, looked down at me, and audibly sniffed his disdain. “Did you see that” fumed Liza, who wanted to challenge him to a duel. Oh, those Viennese, indeed.  

Capriccio is not ideal for a first exposure to Opera – lots of recitative, no memorable arias to become ear worms – but the girls loved it, to Ann’s delight and my relief (Jeez, Mom, they made us go to an opera, ugh!)

My opera journey: The Met and I

When I started dating Ann in the fall of 1988, I knew nothing about opera – despite having appeared in a dozen or so -- with The Met, no less!

 What!?

Yes, me.

In the mid-70’s, I happened to meet at a Minneapolis cocktail party a guy who had just finished appearing with The Met as a supernumerary during its annual summer tour of Minneapolis. Barbara (my first wife) and I weren’t opera goers, but that sounded like a real kick. The next summer, following his instructions, I showed up at U of Minn’s Northrup Auditorium for audition and I was in the super squad. A “super”, you understand, goes where he is directed, does what he is told, and keeps his mouth shut. Over the next four years, I was variously a crucified prisoner in Aida, a serf appearing twice in Boris Godunov, a naval officer, a priest, a Cardinal, a street bystander, and so on.

What does one wear to be crucified?
Aida (1980)

 We would be “cast” purely on age and stature: “OK, I need a Pope; you: Pope. Two Cardinals; you and you. Six priests; you, #1, you, #2, you, #3, . . .” and like that. Then the assistant would holler “OK, standard bearers, Act II, scene 2, now pay attention: you walk up stage when prompted, line up across the back, turn toward the audience, and plant your flagstaff like this. OK? Walk through, follow #1. Fine; go down to make-up and get fitted for costume.” In the meantime, the basso is wandering about warming up his voice singing dirty limericks. An hour later, curtain goes up. Another hour and a half later, Act II: now, after having schmoozed with stagehands, had a beer and brat from the commissary, and taken pictures of each other, the get ready call comes. You panic because you’re not really sure what the hell you were told way back then. Anyway, the prompt comes, “OK, standard bearers, go!” and you find yourself marching onto stage with lights in your eyes keeping you from seeing the thousand faces you know are out there. It is a kick.

But with all the distractions, you learn nothing about the opera and don’t experience as a whole, as does the audience. So, yes, ten years post-Met, I knew nothing about opera.

The Ring and I

The first opera Ann and attended together in the fall of ’88 was Massenet’s Werther. I remember giggling inappropriately as Werther picked up his revolver to blow out his brains over what he assumed was unrequited love. He’s mistaken but mortally wounded when she admits her love. He dies; she swoons; Fletch giggles – all very French. We’ve been opera goers and ticket holders ever since and have seen the Seattle Opera grow into a very accomplished company.

Seattle decided to make its mark in the opera world with quadrennial productions of Wagner’s Ring Cycle as Der Ring des Nibelungs has come to be called (same inspiration as for Tolkien.) I knew little about Wagner other than the Nazis liked him, therefore I didn’t. When the Ring came along in 2001, Ann and I both took off a week from work and attended workshops and seminars; back-of-house tours of costume shop, set construction, how to make Valkyries fly and funeral biers burn; pre-concert lectures; and the four operas – Das Rheingold, Die Walkϋre, Siegfried, and Gӧtterdӓmmerung -- in five nights, 16 hours of Wagner.

 I learned a lot about Wagner, that bi-polar/manic-depressive antisemite (who used the sophism ‘I’m not prejudiced, one of my best friends is a ________.’ Fill in the blank: Muslim, Jew, Black, Mexican, whatever. All antisemites use it as every Jew knows.) Most composers work with lyricists; Wagner worked with himself. Over ten years, he wrote the book and the librettos for all four operas before starting to compose the music for the first! He developed the use of motif, a musical signature for each character. He founded a festival and built Bayreuth, the temple to which Wagnerians from all over the world make their annual pilgrimage. At our 2001 Ring (we’ve since done one other) a lecturer asked us to raise our hands if we’ve done more than one -- three? – five? – ten? – fifteen? The last hand standing: 23!    

 I also learned something about myself. Ann likes memorable arias and the sweep of grand music. I like those too, but I am more focused on plot and the psychology and cultural values being presented. I’ve learned about national character; seen how Italian operas reflect different persona and world views from those of the German, the French from the English and Russian and so on.

Khrushchev, Eisenhower, and Porgy and Bess

As I reflect on all this, I am struck by a memory from 1955, my Junior year at Hamilton. Being a super with The Met was not my first brush with opera, after all.

In the mid-fifties, the State Dept was experimenting with cultural exports as an arrow in our quiver in the  Cold War between US and Soviet hegemony. In 1955, State funded a company of Porgy and Bess starring Leontyne Price as Bess, William Warfield as Porgy, and Cab Calloway as Sportin’ Life. It toured various European and Russian cities to great acclaim.

That Spring, State previewed their production at their Foggy Bottom HQ. Dad loved Gershwin and Porgy and Bess so for their April anniversary, I gave Mom, Dad and myself tickets. What a night – of entertainment, of feeling very grown-up to be treating my parents, of seeing opera for the first time. I still love P&B, especially “Summertime, when the livin’ is easy.”

Fandom

Ann has turned me into a fan. Not the kind who can debate this singer vis-à-vis that, but a fan with opinions nonetheless. I once scandalized a discussion group of psychoanalyst and psychiatrist opera buffs to which a friend invited us, ‘Opera on the Couch’ they called themselves, by panning La Boehme for cardboard-thin stereotypes – the struggling painter, the poet, the playwright, the gold-digging courtesan – and that Poor-Me-Mimi, she’s a joke. Those Bohemians as stereotypes: did Puccini use them or did he create them stereotype? Whatever, we weren’t invited back. 

Opera has enriched my life, my interests, my travels. On a repeat stay in Rome,

Chagall (a favorite) ceiling of Palais de Garnier
(2013)

Castel Sant’Angelo took on a completely different meaning from my earlier visit because of Tosca. Knowing something of the works makes admiring opera houses, as Paris’s Palais de Garnier, Vienna’s Weiner Staatsoper, Palermo’s Teatro Massimo (second largest in Europe), Naples’ Teatro de San Carlo, the Oslo Opera House, or New York’s Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, more than just “seein’ the sights.” (One night in the late ‘70s, I took Harvey Robinson to The Met, can’t remember which opera, on my first visit to the Lincoln Center Opera House. It was she [yes, Harvey is a she] who taught me to cocktail on champagne at the Stamford Court, while in San Francisco to testify at the FTC’s 1978 hearings re advertising to children. I see that the FTC is re-visiting the subject this fall. I’m glad those days are far behind me.)

Puccini ended Tosca with the fat lady singing
as she leapt from Castel Sant'Angelo to
evade retribution for killing Scarpia, her
sexual predator (2006)

I have come to view opera as the ultimate performance art – acting, drama, myth and story, psychology of enmity, and music orchestral and vocal – cultural touchstones for peoples throughout the world. (Even the Chinese have theirs; I once sat through a half in Beijing.)

Yes, Ann’s given me fandom.