My Night at The Opera

The last time I went to the opera as a spectator I saw Renata Scotto's final performance in Tosca. This elderly woman with blonde curls pinned to her head jumped from a platform, as if from the top of building to commit suicide, and then bounced back up. I was surrounded by grieving opera fans trying like hell to choke back the laughter.

Since that time, I've actually appeared on the Lyric stage as a supernumerary. Twice. Once in a historic production of Salome as one of the Romans treated to Salome's dance, and once as one of the swing supers in Aida. As a swing, I was plugged into the holes where other supers didn't show up. One night I was an exotic guard carrying the king of Egypt. All the other nights I was a soldier, painted ominous black. One of those nights I was the standard bearer, leading the Egyptian army into war. I mistook the prompter's signal and left the stage a full four measures too early, stranding some world-famous tenor on stage to sing to the curtains. Invariably I was one of the four soldiers who is entombed with Aida and Radames in the pyramids. Real raw deal.

My opera knowledge is only slightly deeper than my knowledge of football. I have a couple recordings that I'll pop into my machine when I'm cleaning the house. Once I actually sat down with the libretto and followed along. Opera is OK. Like peanut butter, I can take it or leave it.

As a student, I'm eligible for student tickets at the Lyric. For twenty dollars I can sit wherever they have an empty seat. Last night I saw der Rosenkavalier, another Strauss opera. Since Salome, I've developed a fondness for Strauss. I won't say this was disappointing. It's a comic opera and as such it's light. Susan Graham plays a boy who is initially in love with an older woman and then meets a girl. The girl is engaged to a letch who is the cousin to the boy's older woman. The plot isn't too complicated. Of course the music was gorgeous and the soprano who played the older woman couldn't act to save her life. But, boy could she sing. And the bass who played the letch truly was brilliant. But the staging was straight out of Freshman Blocking 101, and the sets looked like they came from a community college production. It most definitely wasn't the giant mirror I stood on in Salome. But I've decided that I like my operas grand and tragic. I want to weep if I'm going to be sitting there for four hours, and I don't want it to be because my butt has gone numb.

And, as a student, I was seated with a lot of other students. A gaggle of them to be precise, all full of the splendor of undergraduate certainty. We were all shoved up at the front, stage right. Actually, not bad seats., and the plus is you don't hear any dowagers unwrapping cough drops. During the intermission my fellow comrades from academia were all denim-clad worldly sophistication, but during the performance they were slack-jawed kids in awe. It was all pretty cute and a lot of fun.

But the most fun of the evening was that I got to use my Withering Glare® twice! And I didn't for a second feel bad about it! The first time was during the first intermission. I'd gone to the lobby and spent ten dollars on a candy bar and Diet Coke, and was standing next to a waste basket to discard the wrapper. I reached for the basket and this woman barreled past me. We bumped into one another and I smiled and mumbled an apology. She kept walking, very slowly, but with her head turned back, glaring at me. Since she was the elephant who ran into me, I drew myself up to all six feet, five inches and showed her how to glare properly. For added measure, I ever-so-slightly curled my upper lip. I was ready to throw down right there in the marble foyer of the Lyric Opera of Chicago. Bring it Grandma! The weird thing -- three minutes later she walked past me again and smiled.

My second Glare® took place on the train on the way home. A very suburban-looking white man decided all of the passengers needed to have their souls saved. It was after midnight, and if the options before me were Everlasting Hell Fire, or thirty minutes of his preachings, I needed a minute to make up my mind. I endured him until the Addison stop. Up to that point I'd caught his eye once and given him a demiglare and he preached more quietly. But at the Addison stop my seatmate needed to get off. So, I stood up. At that moment the preacher looked at me again. I tilted my head down and invited the demons of hell to use me as a vessel to rid the train of such pompous spewing. I glared so hard I may have strained something. But I'm sure the preacher saw the demons I intended, because he his eyes got wider, never leaving my face as he scurried from the train.

Now that's opera!