I thought I had said just about everything that should be said (at least for now) about “Black September” – until I realized that I had neglected to single out one guy who went way above and beyond the call of duty and ended up playing an enormously important role in the opera’s success.
I’m talking about Mike Anderle, a so-called fifth-year senior who finished up his student teaching the middle of January and is about to enter the world as a full-fledged college graduate. Back in early December, when it became clear that Matt and I were going to craft a new work for the J-Term opera workshop guys, I rather casually asked Mike if he would have any interest in maybe playing a small part in the opera- some sort of cameo role that wouldn’t require a lot of time and effort but which would allow him to be at least a small part of what we hoped would be an interesting project. Not surprisingly, Mike- one of the most gung-ho guys I’ve ever known- leapt at the chance, which was wonderful news for Matt and me. We knew that he would not be able to join us until his student teaching was over – and also that his part time job with a local funeral home might occasionally get in the way – but we knew that if anyone could make it work, it would be Mike.
As soon as we knew that Mike was on board, we pegged him to play the pivotal role of German official Dietrich Genscher, who was a key player as the hostage crisis actually played out at the ’72 Olympic games. He was one of the people most directly involved in Germany’s negotiations with the terrorists, and he was one of two westerners allowed in to where the hostages were actually held. (He insisted on it so they could know for sure that the hostages were still alive.) It was during those negotiations that Genscher actually offered himself up in exchange for release of the Israelis – an offer which, of course, was refused.
(This is a photo of Dietrich Genscher in one of the moments when he was face-to-face with Issa, the leader and spokesmen for the terrorists who had abducted the Israeli coaches and athletes.)
Genscher is one of the real-life participants who is featured prominently in the Academy Award-winning documentary “One Day in September” – and Matt saw Genscher as sort of the voice of conscience and regret in our piece. Our opera would begin with Genscher either watching some kind of news story on TV or maybe reading a newspaper account about the ’72 incident – and the music would begin the moment he either snapped off the TV or slammed down his newspaper in frustration, as he began to reminisce about those terrible hours. I think Matt and I envisioned Genscher as getting the work going – and then returning at the very end for some closing reflection. It would be the perfect assignment for someone who we wanted to be part of it but whose time with us would be severely limited.
I should add that Mike and I go back a long, long way. I began teaching Mike voice lessons the summer before his freshman year all the way through his graduation from Carthage- eight years. (Only Nick Barootian, from an earlier era at Carthage, has endured me for such a long time.) Mike came to me via his middle school choir teacher, Keri (Heckel) Bieri, who wanted to make absolutely certain that he continued to sing. And boy, did he ever! And Mike and I had a tremendously good time all the way, and was a great joy for me to see Mike grow and mature as a singer – and even more so as an artist and musician.
(This is Mike back in his high school days, receiving a critique from his judge that day, a former voice student of mine named Paul Marchese. This photo always makes me smile.)
And during his time at Carthage, Mike was a major player in every one of our opera productions, beginning with “The Marriage of Figaro” his freshman year (in which he ended up stepping into the large role of Count Almaviva when a senior had to drop out.) That was a huge undertaking but Mike did an admirable job, and he followed that up with the roles of Belcore (Elixir of Love), Michel (Il Tabarro), Gianni Schicchi, Guglielmo (Cosi fan tutte), plus significant roles in our Gilbert & Sullivan program, our opera/ music theater crossover, and two pastiches: “Happy Birthday, Herr Handel!” and “Mozart is Dead.” That adds up to quite a legacy, and Matt and I were excited to be able to extend that legacy at least a little bit longer by including him in “Black September.”
It wasn’t long before Mike’s little cameo began to take on a life of its own, and the role began to expand and envelop nearly every single scene in the opera. Although the action of the plot obviously centered on the hostages and terrorists, Genscher became both the narrator who ushered in much of the action- and also the representative of the Germans who saw their so-called “cheerful games” transformed into a nightmare. Matt placed Mike above the rest of the action, on top of a tall stack of platforms, from which his voice rang out brilliantly. Only once during the opera did he come down from his high perch – for the scene when Genscher is ushered into the room where the hostages are held, and listens to the message that each of them wants him to take back to their love ones. It’s a powerful scene in which Mike has to convey Genscher’s mounting sense of anguish and frustration that he is so powerless to help these courageous men. This is also the scene when Genscher offers himself up in exchange for the Israelis, and I couldn’t get over how authentically Mike managed to bring that moment alive. And it also fell to Genscher/Mike to describe the carnage at the airport – and to deliver the shattering news of their final fate: “Our worst fears….. our very worst fears ….. They were all gone. They were all gone.” I think the broken way that Mike delivered that line will haunt me for a long, long time to come.
If you’ve followed anything at all about “Black September,” you know that it was crafted in a ridiculously short amount of time. The guys received the music for the first scene on Monday, January 11th – and the music for the final scene on Friday, January 22nd. During those two weeks, due to his student teaching, a trip out of town, and his job at the funeral home, we saw Mike for a total of two and a half rehearsals. It meant that it would fall on Mike’s own shoulders to master and memorize his music – and beyond just learning it, to become emotionally meshed with it. Had it been the modest amount of music originally imagined, I would have had no worry whatsoever. But Genscher had become the largest solo role in the opera- and one of the most crucial- so a great deal was riding on Mike’s own commitment to the project.
I am thrilled to say – and not the least bit surprised to say – that Mike was a true champion and came through with a performance that seared itself to all of our hearts. The opera began with his opening lines: “So viel fur die heitren Spiele…. So much for the ‘cheerful games.’ ‘Warfare without weapons.’ The fabled Olympic truce” as Genscher reflects on the radiant promise of what these games were supposed to be …. the ultimate repudiation of the infamous Hitler games of ’36. The rest of the cast then took the stage to sing variants on the famous Ode to Joy, with Mike’s voice rising above them all to sing “and then we mourned …. mourned the lost hopes for beloved Munich …. a village of a million people where we dreamed …. dreamed …. dreamed of making so much right again in the skeptical eyes of the world …..” In this moment, Genscher is to embody all of the high hopes for those games and the anguish and regret felt by so many about the terrible turn it all took and how shamefully ineffective the Germans were to confront the crisis. And Mike really managed to do that. And that sense of heartbreak and regret was beautifully sustained right up to the last line of the work: “The summer was all too short.” I was so glad when Carthage grad Katie Schmidt, after watching the opera via live stream, went on Facebook to acknowledge how far Mike has come artistically since the two of them were Count and Countess more than four years ago. And it’s true. Mike has become a singer who has far more than just a wonderful voice to offer. He brings his heart and soul as well- and he really did that in an extraordinary way with this project.
Perhaps one of the biggest reasons for Mike’s unflagging devotion to “Black September” had something to do with the fact that he was a double major in Music and History – and intends to become a History Teacher. And this new opera, if initially conceived to give our ‘opera guys’ an exciting and challenging project, quickly became a means to share with the community a very important story that a lot of people have largely forgotten – and that many young people know absolutely nothing about. It is in so many ways regrettable when we forget our own history- but thanks in large measure to Mike and his ten cast mates, the story of Munich ’72 and those courageous Israelis has been given a new kind of life.