Part One of my Friday morning show was a conversation with a wonderful woman by the name of Dorothy Constantine. Back in March at the Lisa Neubauer swearing in ceremony – or I should say at the reception afterwards – Kate Barrow called to me across the crowded room because there was a story that I just had to hear. And she was right.
Dorothy was about to head out to New York City a couple days later to attend the Metropolitan Opera for the first time. And she was doing so in honor of her mother, who died back in 1959 (at the age of 56.) It was her mother who introduced Dorothy to opera and the two of them spent many a Saturday afternoon listening together to the Met broadcasts. And one of her mother’s favorite operas was Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, especially when Lily Pons was singing the title role. So for all of these years since her death, Dorothy has thought about attending the Met to see Lucia in honor of her mother. . . doing something that it was never possible for her mother to do. But there were false starts of one kind or another – and it just never worked out. Until this year. Lucia was on the Met’s schedule, for both the fall and spring, and it lined up with Dorothy’s calendar and her finances, etc. So she went, meeting her daughter there, and she ended up having the time of her life.
Having helped Trevor Parker attend the Met for the first time this spring – and having only attended three Met performances myself – I am well acquainted with the thrill of that first time when you walk through the doors of that magnificent opera house and into that gorgeous auditorium. But I really can’t imagine what it would feel like to be experiencing all of that in honor and memory of your mother. That just seems like too much love and joy and meaning piled up at once. But how wonderful that Dorothy, at long last, was able to experience that. I’m sure her mother was somewhere smiling.
If you want to hear her tell the story herself, go to wgtd.org – click on Talk – and then find the Morning Show archive.