When someone you know is crowned Miss America, that pretty much dwarfs every other headline for the week- but for me a close second in that week’s list of thrills was when I attended a performance of Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. I like this opera, but I’ve seen it four or five times at the Lyric in the very same production, so I was actually not expecting any thrills whatsoever – just a fun night at the opera. Boy, was I wrong.
I was actually supposed to see Magic Flute back in early December, according to my season tickets, but I was tied up with rehearsals – but honestly, missing another performance of Flute was not exactly heartbreaking to me. I feel idiotic saying something so dismissive about one of the finest operas by one of history’s greatest geniuses performed at one of the world’s most important opera houses- but still, I was perfectly okay with missing it. Then I realized that the second run of Magic Flute performances in January was going to feature a different tenor, Alek Shrader, in the role of Tamino. Shrader was featured in a really fascinating documentary several years ago called “The Auditions” about the 2007 Metropolitan Opera Auditions- and Shrader made a huge impression not only by shooting off high C’s like bottle rockets, but also with his thoroughly winning personality. I did a Morning Show interview with the director of the film, Susan Froemke, so I knew that a fair number of listeners knew about the film and about Alek Shrader’s place in it – and many of them watched the film itself in theaters. So to make a long story short, I arranged a phone interview with the up and coming tenor for my Morning Show- and in appreciation the Lyric media office kindly offered me a free press ticket to a Magic Flute performance of my choice. And because I’ve been a bachelor nearly every weekday evening because of my wife’s rehearsals at the Racine Theater Guild, this sounded like a nice little one-night getaway.
Just how nice a getaway it would turn out to be did not become apparent until I got to the opera house, went to the box office, and was handed a ticket for the Main Floor, Row F… which turned out to be a seat in the fifth row, right on the aisle – by far the best seats I have ever had in 25 years of attending the Lyric. Our regular season ticket seats are up in the top balcony, so far from the stage that the singers we’re watching look like colorfully-dressed fleas, so to be so much closer to them – close enough that they actually looked like full-sized people – was absolutely extraordinary.
By the way, I was given two tickets – but none of the usual suspects were either available or interested in joining me- although if I had known that I was going to be given such spectacular seats, I would not have taken No for an answer. As it is, the empty seat next to me turned out to be a $239 coat rack for the night. And by the way, I did have a bit of a scare right before the performance started, when a very nicely dressed couple came up to me, thinking that I was sitting in their seats. I had this sinking feeling that maybe there had been a snafu in the box office since these press passes were arranged at the last minute, and if these nice people had plunked down 2 X $239 for these seats, there was no way I would be staying put. Boy, if I had been compelled to vacate my seat for some place back up in the rafters, I’m sure I would have cried all the way there. But it turns out that their tickets were for Row F in the Dress Circle, so I got to stay right where I was. (How I managed to keep from letting how a jubilant war whoop at that moment I’ll never know.)
And the performance itself was splendid, and I felt so very fortunate to be taking it in from such a close vantage point. It was also fun to know three- count ‘em, three singers in the cast! One of them was Alek Shrader, whom I only knew from our phone interview until I met him afterwards- but also in the cast were two singers I’ve actually accompanied on the piano: Nicole Cabell, who has sung several times at Carthage – and Rodell Rosell, a superb character tenor who was part of a special opera concert I organized for the Fine Arts at First series. It was fun to greet each of them at the stage door afterwards, although my fear of giving them my nasty cold kept me from talking more than a few seconds with each of them – or getting too close!
Anyway, it was quite an exciting night – and although I tried to take it in stride, I spent most of the twenty minutes before the performance texting Kathy, Marshall, Trevor to tell them about my splendidly good fortune, plus I snapped photographs like a hillbilly who just fell off the turnip truck. And once the curtain went up, I just drank in the spectacle with an overwhelming sense of gratitude bordering on disbelief.
Part of what brought my experience at the Lyric to mind was that earlier tonight – exactly a week after Flute – I paid my first visit to the Alchemist Theater in Milwaukee to see a performance by Milwaukee Opera Theater: the world premiere of a new opera called “Fortuna the Time Bender vs. The Daughters of Doom.” We were in a small space with a grand total of 65 seats- and just like at the Lyric, I was five rows from the stage. It was a case of experiencing opera not in its full grandeur but at its most intimate, and it turned out to be great fun… thanks in large measure to the fine performance of my friend and Carthage colleague Melissa Cardamone. A week ago I was in an opera house that seats over 3,000- one of the most spectacular structures in all of Chicago. Tonight I was in a performance space not much larger than our living room- and I actually drove right past the little store front theater twice without even seeing it before finally spotting it on my third pass!
That’s what’s so amazing and gratifying: that Opera Lives not only in glittering auditoriums like the Lyric Opera of Chicago…. but also in such humble quarters as the Alchemist Theater. May it live on forever.
pictured above: This is the curtain call for The Magic Flute- and this photo was taken without any zoom at all. This is how the singers appeared to me from my seat in the fifth row. By the way, I’m not sure why row F is the fifth row, when “F” is the sixth letter of the alphabet. If I’m ever back in that ritzy neck of the woods, I will poke around and get that question answered.