My trip to Chicago Tuesday yielded not only a wonderful performance at the Lyric Opera and a delicious meal with Marshall, but it was also the day when I discovered a store to which I will be returning again and again and again, master card in hand. It’s located in a wonderful old structure on Michigan Avenue called The Fine Arts Building, which features all-but-extinct old-fashioned elevators that are manually run by an operator. This building has a bit of special history for me because it is on the top floor of this building that I sang my preliminary audition for the Lyric Opera of Chicago back in the summer of 1984. They had cattle call auditions in three cities- I believe San Francisco, New York City, and Chicago- and these were the auditions where they sifted through almost 500 aspiring singers to select (I believe) just 30 for finals. I went with my dad and although I walked the streets of downtown Chicago terrified that we would be mugged at any second (I literally walked with my hand resting on my wallet the whole time) I felt a strange sort of calm as I walked into that large dance studio where a panel of three judges were listening to a large parade of what amounted to maybe 150 singers over the course of three days. And I must not have stunk up the place too badly because they eventually asked me back to sing in the final auditions, which occurred on the stage of the Lyric Opera House itself – and ultimately they took me into the Opera Center as an incredibly green (and I don’t mean environmentally-minded) youngster of 24, the youngest of the twelve apprentices that year.
Anyway, whenever I walk into that building I find myself reliving those events from more than a quarter of a century ago. . . and as Marshall and I walked those halls this time around (on our way to a music store on the 7th floor) he said that it’s interesting to think about all of the aspiring singers who have sung in the various studios and practice rooms of that venerable Fine Arts Building. When that building was built, the victrola had scarcely been invented – and now people walk through the door listening to their iPods. But it’s still very much the same challenge facing singers then and now- to master one’s use of the wonderful instrument of them all, the human voice.
Anyway, as we exited the building this time around, I just happened to see a sign which featured perhaps the most beautiful five words in the english language: Used Books & Sheet Music! It was a sign for a store called Selected Works which used to be located on the north side of the city but which relocated to the Fine Arts Building a couple of years ago. We had some time to kill, and with Marshall’s kind blessing we headed right back to the elevator and had ourselves deposited on the second floor. And there it was, just as promised: a lovely old store with used books in room upon room, piled nearly to the ceiling. And right in the middle of the store was a veritable mountain of used sheet music and scores- some of it very standard stuff but lots of it were things I’ve never even seen before. It’s the kind of store you couldn’t possibly explore in the few minutes I had available- I had to settle for some hurried skimming.
As I was making my frantic way through what mounted to ten tall piles of scores, something prompted me to open up a hard-bound score to Handel’s opera Julius Caesar. (I have no idea what .) And there inside the front cover was stamped the name and address of Elsa Charleston – who happened to be a very close friend of my dad’s back at St. Olaf in the mid 1950’s. I had heard her name mentioned any number of times over the years and had met her maybe once- and I knew that she had been a professional singer and a teacher in the Chicago area- but it was still such a stunning surprise to open up this used score and come across this very familiar name. It made me doubly glad that we had sought out this little store.
As I was finishing up my “grazing” my peripheral vision caught the fleeting image of something darting across the top of the bookshelf behind me. It took me a few seconds before I finally tracked down who or what was keeping me company: it was the owner’s pet cat, who lives in the shop and obviously considers these bookshelves to be home. What a lovely touch this was and yet another reason to be glad that we had found this little gem in the heart of downtown Chicago. It’s amazing how something as simple and sweet as a little cat — or the name of a family friend stamped in a book — can make all the difference in the world.