A week ago, “opera buddy” Marshall Anderson and I began our 30th season of attending the Lyric Opera of Chicago. It’s a milestone that’s both exciting and bewildering, especially when I realize that we’ve been going to the opera ten years longer than most of my Carthage voice students have been alive. When we first bought season tickets, Ronald Reagan was president, I was a bachelor (and had not yet even met Kathy), and nobody had heard of something called the internet (or ebooks or email or laptops or cell phones.) Thirty long years later, we’re enjoying it as much as ever, even if the casts aren’t quite as starry as they were 30 years ago and the stairs in the opera house seem to have gotten a whole lot steeper over the years. It’s still our favorite art form, especially when we can experience it at a place like the Lyric.
30 straight seasons of opera-going deserves some sort of special bells and whistles, and bell & whistle #! came when my precious niece Aidan mentioned in passing in a Facebook private message that she and her college roommate would be traveling over to Chicago (during Luther’s fall break) to see Rossini’s La Cenerentola on Tuesday night …. the same night, coincidentally, that Marshall and I would be there. Right then and there, I hatched a plan to surprise Marshall. I told him that we would rendezvous with someone special- but he had no idea who he/she/they would be. We ended up meeting on the front stairs of the Art Institute, and I could tell that Marshall was both surprised and delighted. Aidan is so much fun to be around, and so is her roommate Marie, who I had never met until that night. She’s an absolute delight, and also quite an astute opera fan for someone so young. The four of us visited the best used book store in downtown Chicago and followed it up with a delicious Mediterranean meal, but the best thing was just being together. And as nice as it was for me to see my beautiful niece, it was equally nice to finally meet her lovely roommate, who comes from a town not far from Nice, France.
Bell and whistle #2 was actually a surprise that Marshall had for me: for the modest cost of ten dollars he upgraded our $55 seats in the upper balcony to $200 seats down on the main floor (in row S, so quite close to the front), which is possible to do when the main floor isn’t sold out. I’d sat on the main floor twice before, but on both occasions I was on my own. This time around it was so fun to be sitting with Marshall, and we both agreed that this upgrade thing is something we’re going to do whenever the opportunity presents itself. It not only gave us a much closer look at the stage . . .
but also a fresh perspective on just how enormous and spectacularly beautiful that auditorium is. (That’s something that’s easy to take for granted when you’ve been going there for as long as we have.)
When we sat down, I noticed that the man sitting next to me was reading a braille version of that evening’s program. It turns out that Paul has been attending the Lyric since 1962, and he loves opera every bit as much as Marshall and I do- and knows it inside out! Actually, we fell in love with the guy the moment I asked him for his favorite Lyric performance from the last 53 years, and he responded “the 1971 Semiramide with Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne.” We liked how he had a deep veneration for the superstars he saw back in the old days and yet was willing to appreciate today’s finest singers as well. (Way too many old-timers are way too attached to the Golden Age and treat today’s singers with such sour pessimism.) Paul turned out to be easily the most delightful and engaging fellow audience members we’ve met in 30 years at the Lyric. (There are a few friendly people with whom we have struck up conversations over the years, but they have all appeared to have only the vaguest sort of understanding of opera. We realize that most people are not going to be as nerdy as we are, but we knew that there had to be somebody there who was caught up in the art form as passionately as we are. And it felt like such a tremendous treat to finally meet such a fan in Paul. So this was Bell and Whistle #3.
By evening’s end, we had reconnected with Aidan and Marie and gone to the stage door, where we had a fun chat with Laura Deming, our good friend who has played cello in the Lyric orchestra since the early 1970’s.
And in a moment that felt like the cherry on top of the sundae, we got to meet the night’s tenor, Lawrence Brownlee, whose sparkling performance as the Prince was one of the best treats of the evening. (His Cinderella, mezzo soprano Isabel Leonard, was wonderful as well.) I had heard that Brownlee was an exceptionally warm and friendly guy, and that is exactly what he turned out to be. In some ways, the best part was just watching Aidan and Marie as they talked with him. What a thrill for them!
I just realized that I have scarcely said a word about the performance itself. The opera, which is by Rossini, has some wonderful moments- but it is not as perfectly crafted as The Barber of Seville. (It’s a little too repetitive, and the storyline sort of runs out of gas in the second half.) The production we saw was colorful but odd, but what redeemed the evening for us was the spectacular singing by a cast that would be close to the best that one could assemble in this day and age. In some ways, that is the miracle of opera …. that even when the visuals leave a lot to be desired, the music and the singing can more than redeem the evening. This night was also a gratifying reminder that even something you’ve done for 30 years straight can still be an exciting, fun-filled adventure.
I also walked away from this evening with high hopes that Aidan (19 years old) will have all kinds of wonderful opera in her future ….. whether as a singer on the stage or as a grateful member of the audience, or both. Certainly she has already experienced more opera than I had at her age- and I can tell that she has already developed quite a passion for it. That being said, Aidan’s gifts and interests range rather widely, and there’s no telling where her talents will take her. But one thing is certain: her Uncle Greg hopes that opera and all of its glories will always be some part of her life, and that it will give her the thrills and chills that it has given Marshall and me for so much of our lives.
