After you’ve been to New York City six or seven times (like Kathy and I have been) you really start to feel a lot less like a tourist – even though there are all kinds of tourist things we have yet to do there. I have yet to visit Ellis Island or the Statue of Liberty and neither of us has toured the United Nations or explored the Museum of Modern Art other than their fabulous and quirky gift shop. But most of the headline destinations we have already explored, and some of them more than once . . . so unlike earlier NYC trips when we were almost frantic to take in as much of the city as we possibly could (and when we were young enough and energetic enough to do so without killing ourselves) we now take in the city with the measured calm of veterans. And yet it remains a thrilling place for us to visit, and no matter how many times we return there, it will always be cause for celebration.
We did do a couple of touristy things this time around, including the tour of Lincoln Center- which we had done before but not in quite some time. For me, any chance to walk the grounds of Lincoln Center – let alone to get a peek inside those hallowed halls of music – is an extra special treat. In fact, this is the kind of geek I am: The day of the tour (which was at 2:00 in the afternoon), while Kathy spent the morning in Chinatown with Polly and the Tremper Choir, I chose to visit the Museum of Television & Radio…. which for me feels like E.T. climbing aboard the mother ship. For a $10 fee, you are ushered into a room full of computer stations at which you can view anything from their vast archives. . . including priceless old opera telecasts that have never been released on home video or to an outlet like Youtube. You want to see “The Medium” with the original Madame Flora, Claramae Turner? Or the NBC Opera telecast of “Dialogues of the Camelites” with Patricia Neway? You have to come to the Museum of Television & Radio. Of course, for a lot of people, the thought of going to a spectacular city like New York City, only to lock yourself in a dark room to watch television would be positively nuts. Guilty as charged.
What does this have to do with the Lincoln Center tour? In honor of that, I made a point of visiting the Museum of Television & Radio to watch excerpts from the incredible concert with which Lincoln Center opened back in 1962. Leonard Bernstein conducted the New York Philharmonic and a dazzling array of vocal soloists including Eileen Farrell, Shirley Verrett, Jon Vickers, Richard Tucker and George London …. in works by Beethoven, Mahler, Vaughan Williams, and Aaron Copland. And among those in attendance was First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. I have watched this precious footage at least twice before at the museum, but even the third time around it still gave me the shivers, and at least a couple of especially thrilling moments, I found myself making that universally recognized gesture of giddy excitement- clenched fists, held parallel shoulder width apart, shaking outwardly- the way my niece Lorelai looks when she first opens an especially exciting present. (I wonder what the person in the next booth, watching a past Super Bowl, thought as they stole a few glances in my direction.)
Anyway, watching some of that venerable old CBS telecast (again, never released on home video) made me so excited for that afternoon’s tour, which in our case was led by a fun lady who had been a dancer and was still occasionally onstage at the Metropolitan Opera as an extra. She had lots of saucy and witty things to say, and if the tour was a little lean on information, it was rich in entertainment.
The moment that left me absolutely thunderstruck was when we sat in one of the balconies of Avery Fischer Hall. That would be where the New York Philharmonic performs, and would be a familiar sight to anyone who has watched “Live from Lincoln Center” telecasts. Just before we got up to leave, the tour guide- knowing we were a choir group – asked if we wanted to sing a little something. Since the choir had split up into multiple groups for the tour, Polly – who happened to be in our little group – surmised that we likely didn’t have the right balance of SATB in our particular group, and politely declined the unexpected invitation. So then the tour guide asked if one person wanted to sing a few notes, and I’m touched to say that I was the group’s nominee – and right from my seat in the balcony at the very back of Avery Fischer Hall, I sang the first line of “Di Provenza” from La Traviata. I made the most of what I’m pretty sure was my one and only opportunity to lift my voice into the rafters of one of the most famous concert halls in the country, if not the world.
About twenty minutes later, we found ourselves sitting on the ground floor level of the Metropolitan Opera’s main auditorium. I’ve been to the Met for three performances, but all of them have been up in the balconies – and I’ve never so much as set foot in the ground floor’s orchestral seating. So it was tremendously thrilling to see that gorgeous hall from that unfamiliar vantage point. And there was plenty of work happening onstage with several dozen guys scampering over the scenery for a Met production about to open, which was quite interesting.
That’s when our tour guide shocked me by inviting me to sing a few notes. Me? In the Met? I was absolutely flabbergasted by the invitation, because the Met tends to be run like a totalitarian state, with a million regulations that are strictly enforced- where just blowing your nose in the wrong place might get you kicked out of the place. I was thunderstruck. And I think all of the hustle and bustle up on the stage was another reason why I couldn’t bring myself to sing a single note. In empty Avery Fischer Hall? No problem. I’m surprised I didn’t sing the whole dang aria! But at the Met, with all of those stage hands present – most of whom, of course, could have given a rip – I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. It felt somehow disrespectful to do so. And I will confide that I was also sort of afraid that nobody would notice or care. Let me try to explain.
I think a lot of aspiring singers dream up a beguiling, fanciful fiction in which stardom is suddenly thrust upon them without them having to audition hundreds of times to no avail and pay their dues in all kinds of other ways. In that fiction, Metropolitan GM Peter Gelb is walking through the lobby of the Met with artistic director James Levine, lamenting the fact that Dimitri Hvorostovsky no longer wants to sing the role of Valentin in Gounod’s Faust and wondering what exciting baritone they can find on such short notice. Just then. . . in a miraculous answer to their prayers . . . the sound of an incredibly lovely baritone voice begins wafting out to the lobby from the auditorium. “Who could that be,” they wonder. “There’s only a technical rehearsal going on; there aren’t any singers called at all.” They open up the door and realize to their delight that the singer in question is just a tourist, singing a couple lines from “Avant de quitter ces lieux,” which just happens to be Valentin’s big aria. Gelb and Levine turn and look to each other, and one of them whispers “I think we just found our Valentin.” The other smiles and nods. FADE TO BLACK.
I harbored that little fantasy fiction for a few years – until the fall of 1985, when I began my stint at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, which included- among other things- singing in the chorus for Verdi’s Otello with none other than Placido Domingo in the title role. I’ll never forget the last rehearsal before the dress rehearsal, because that was actually the first day that Mr. Domingo was in the house- having just flown in from his previous engagement. And at one point, when Maestro Bartoletti asked for the chorus to sing our big act one number again, sitting wherever we happened to be on the stage, I was amazed to realize that Domingo himself had plopped down right next to me, just as the orchestra began playing. He glanced at me for a split second and gave me a pleasant look, but then focused his attention elsewhere. “Wow,” I thought to myself, “this is my big chance to impress Placido Domingo!” And I proceeded to pour out what felt to me like a veritable volcano of baritonal gorgeousness, singing as though my very life depended on it. And when the chorus ended, I imagined Domingo turning to me and asking “what in the world is a singer like you doing in the chorus?!?! You must sing Iago to my Otello!” But no. Domingo never so much as glanced at me again, as far as I could tell- and never said a single word to me.
The other day as I stood in the Met, I found myself thinking of that little novella and it felt a thousand times more absurd than it ever had before. . . and I somehow knew that not only would Peter Gelb not be strolling by, but the mightiest notes I might unleash would not have had the slightest impact on any of those stagehands. So when our tour guide asked if I wanted to sing a few notes in that legendary place, I was just struck dumb. Kathy gently prodded me but then pretty quickly realized that I just wasn’t going to. I couldn’t. Simple as that. But not just from the surprise and shock – from the self-consciousness – or from the fear of looking ridiculous. More than that, it was the fact that the Met is where Renee Fleming and Deborah Voigt and Jonas Kaufmann and Placido Domingo sing. The Met is where Dimitri Hvorostovsky sings. And just as importantly, it’s where Richard Tucker and Robert Merrill and Joan Sutherland and Leontyne Price sang, once upon a time. It’s their musical home, not mine.
And that’s okay. I’m happy to be there as a thrilled and literally dumbstruck visitor and opera lover…. perfectly content to save my voice for Siebert Chapel and Holy Communion Lutheran Church and the Pennoyer Park Bandshell and the other places which, at least musically, I call home.
pictured above: Of every strictly-speaking illegal photograph I’ve ever surreptitiously taken, I think this is the scariest- because the Met has an EXTREMELY strict policy against any photos being taken anywhere inside the opera house except around the grand staircase. But our tour guide was just oblivious enough that I knew I could get away with it. (I hope no impressionable Tremper students were close enough to see me do it.)