Four hours of opera listening?  Most people would prefer four hours of weed pulling or teeth flossing – but not Greg Berg and Trevor Parker.  We were camped out in front of the TV/stereo with a pile of CDs, DVDs, and even a few LPs featuring some of our favorite singers and operas-  and had ourselves an absolutely glorious time.  I won’t go into the specifics – or maybe I’ll save them for a footnote – but suffice to say that the time flew by and my only regret was that I don’t manage to do this much more often.    First of all,  I should be spending much more time than I do simply listening to great music,   and not to prepare for an upcoming concert or lecture, but just for plain fun – and because music is one the life’s most precious gifts and to neglect it is just plain dumb.  (It’s interesting that some of us who have music woven into our professional lives in one way or another tend to step away from music in our free time- which is understandable and okay to a point, but not when we overdo it.)   But secondly, yesterday reminds me that there is a special joy in sharing music with a friend – and that’s REALLY what I need to do more of.   Because otherwise you’re just simmering in your own juices- which can be pleasant enough- but it’s when you toss ingredients together that you really get something especially exciting and delicious.   Or to take the food metaphor in a different direction,  there is something fun about going to a great restaurant on your own…  but how much better to feast there with family or friends- to give each other tastes, to answer each other’s questions (like “what’s this pile of yellow stuff next to the asparagus?”) to commiserate over what isn’t so great,  and to rhapsodize about all that’s wonderful.  (Like the wonderful Irish restaurant in Kenosha which Kathy, Trevor, Megan and I visited for dinner.  What fun that was!)   Isn’t music a similar sort of joy,  a joy meant to be shared?

Listening with Trevor yesterday reminded me of something which I’ve certainly learned over the last 24 years of attending the Lyric Opera with my best friend Marshall- and that is that it is a really precious blessing when you have a listening or viewing partner who is a perfect match.  It’s not that he and I are carbon copies of each other or even equals – Marshall has been an opera fan longer than I have, he is much more astute when it comes to the theatrical and design elements of the art form,  and he’s just plain smarter than me.   But I come to this with more musical study under my belt, a sliver of real life opera singing under my belt, and lots of strong opinions of my own.  What we share in common is an insane love for this art form,  a comparable love of discussion and dissection of what we see and hear,  and – maybe more important of all – a generally positive and hopeful attitude about what we experience.   We want to be impressed and enjoy being impressed.  (This puts us in marked contrast with a lot of long-time, well-read opera fans who seem to revel in not enjoying what they see and hear – the kind of fans who seem to think that nobody has sung a decent Lucia since Lily Pons retired in 1962.)  But on the other hand, when we’re not impressed,  we know how to skewer the offending party…. and we can enjoy that as well.  The point is that Marshall and I are really good “opera partners” for each other- in much the same way that my wife and I are really good partners in attending Broadway shows or choral concerts…..    and a perfectly apt metaphor is that we are good partners in the same way that Dave Krueger and I are well-matched partners on the tennis court, both in ability level and temperament.  Maybe an even better parallel image is of two baseball fans who go to games together and enjoy them with similar compatibility, versus a well-read student of the game attending with someone who has to ask questions like “can you tell me one more time what a bunt is?” or who falls asleep by the bottom of the fourth.  That’s not likely to work out too well.

Back to yesterday and the great fun that Trevor and I had with our opera afternoon.    One thing it reminded me of is that being good partners has nothing to do with age or experience.   I am basically twice as old as Trevor and the year I won the district Metropolitan Opera auditions was the year Trevor was born (it makes me feel positively ancient to type those words)   so when it comes to opera,  I have a bit of a head start,  to say the least.   But Trevor is WAY ahead of where I was at his age in appreciating the art form itself,  and already an exceptionally astute and discerning listener.   (I get a tiny bit of credit for that as the teacher of the opera history class that lit his fire, but he’s taken that start and run with it most impressively.)   But what really makes it work is that we just seem to enjoy opera on the same wavelength, even if certain specific preferences might differ. (I’m a Gwyneth Jones guy and he’s more of a Hildegard Behrens guy- although we both like Birgit Nilsson…. which is sort of like saying that I like Peyton Manning and he likes Drew Brees but we both like Brett Favre.)  And I can imagine us enjoying these kind of operatic get-togethers for many years to come.

Anyway,  I’ve done enough dissecting of and reflecting on this,  but that’s what I tend to do when I’m excited about something – or when I appreciate something for the great and rare blessing that it is.

pictured above:  Trevor and some of the recordings we watched and listened to.

For anyone who cares:   We started with the amazing Canadian tenor Jon Vickers,  and two arias from his Italian arias album- including “Cielo e mar” from La Gioconda. I followed that up with the DVD of Verdi’s Otello with Vickers and Renata Scotto, which offered up some incredibly powerful singing and theater.   I’m going to forgot something here (it was four hours, after all)  but I know we heard some of the Siegfried Love Duet with Hildegard Behrens and Reiner Goldberg,  the Immolation Scene with Gwyneth Jones,   the Recognition Scene from Elektra with Christine Brewer (the soprano that Trevor, Marshall and I heard at Ravinia earlier in the summer),  Ben Heppner singing music from the Ring Cycle, Kirsten Flagstad in several  different arias,  and the Nile Scene from Aida with Leontyne Price and Jon Vickers (which was the last thing we listened to,  bringing us full circle.)  Talk about an amazing banquet!  (And it was MUCH more fun than pulling weeds or flossing teeth!)