This is a ferociously busy time of the year for me, with Kenosha Solo & Ensemble right around the corner and Racine’s competition happening the following weekend, so every cubic inch of what would otherwise be free time for me is taken up with lessons and rehearsals…. once in awhile lasting until 10 p.m. or even later. (God bless Kathy for putting up with such craziness, especially as she battles her own case of bronchitis. I’m grateful to know that she is capable of heading upstairs, closing the bedroom door, climbing into bed, and somehow managing to fall asleep to the sound of “Dancing thru Life” or “The Vagabond” wafting up from the downstairs studio.)
As luck would have it, smack dab in the middle of an already crazy week was my latest night at the Lyric Opera of Chicago – – – Wagner’s Lohengrin. (All five hours of it.) For about three seconds I was tempted to skip it altogether, just to keep the week a little simpler and in order to not inflict myself with a very short night’s sleep. (These midweek operatic sojourns to Chicago typically get me back home a little before 1 a.m., but it’s never easy to fall asleep after all that excitement.)
But almost immediately I realized that to skip Lohengrin for the sake of a good night’s sleep would be roughly akin to skipping a public showing of the Mona Lisa because you’re getting your hair done the next morning. Lohengrin is one of the towering masterpieces in western music – and the kind of imposing work that opera companies do not exactly mount at the drop of a hat. Marshall and I have been season ticket holders to the Lyric for 25 years, and in all that time the Lyric has never done Lohengrin. (I think their last staging of it was in 1980.) So to skip this now was for all intents and purposes would mean skipping my one and only chance to see this incredible opera in person. I don’t know- maybe it has something to do with having 51 candles on one’s birthday cake- but I find myself thinking more and more in terms of seizing opportunities that very likely will not come my way again.
So I went to Lohengrin – and was really glad that a meeting that Marshall had earlier that day was moved a little earlier, which meant that we got to go down to Chicago together. (Otherwise, we were going to be going down separately, which was part of what had made me think briefly about staying home.) A huge part of what I cherish about this quarter century of attending the Lyric has been the pleasure of sharing it with my best friend- and although it has been great fun from time to time to share the experience with others . . . Jeff Barrow for Romeo and Juliet, my wife Kathy for Il Trittico and Susannah, Lynn Helmke for Un Ballo in Maschera, and Trevor Parker for Salome . . . it is with Marshall that I have this shared history of opera-going. I suppose it would be like two buddies who have been fly- fishing together for 25 years . . . or attending Milwaukee Brewers’ games for 25 years . . . who can share not only the present pleasures of the experience but also everything else that has been part of the experience up until then.
As it turns out, Lohengrin offered up all kinds of riches that made it more than worth the trip. First of all, the opera itself is gloriously beautiful (it’s sometimes called Wagner’s bel canto opera – and bel canto means “beautiful singing”) but it still has to be performed well or it’s all for nought. (I just read someone’s comment that a really poor performance of a musical masterpiece is a little bit like seeing da Vinci’s Last Supper on an Etch-a-Sketch.) Fortunately, we heard some spectacular singing- especially from Johann Botha, the South African tenor who sang the title role. At one point during the evening, Marshall leaned over to me and whispered “I can’t imagine Lauritz Melchior sounding any better .” And I completely agree. But in some quarters those would be fightin’ words, because Melchior was one half of the Golden Age duo of Flagstad and Melchior that performed Wagner’s greatest opera to great acclaim between 1935 and 1941. A lot of old-timer opera fans take exception to the notion that someone before the public today deserves to be even mentioned in the same breath with the legends of the past. But I’m Marshall on this one: I can’t imagine the role of Lohengrin being sung any better than we heard Botha do it, especially in the way that he could sing the thundering climaxes so powerfully and confidently, and then turn right around and caress the most gentle and tender phrases. It felt like we were in the presence of someone who could do everything except walk on water – and to be witness to such a spectacular performance was nothing less than a privilege.
By the way, I should mention – in the interest of full disclosure – that I had to watch act one of the opera on a monitor in the lobby of the opera house. The reason is that I did some music shopping that took me all the way to the Fine Arts Building on Michigan Avenue, and when I finally finished what turned out to be an unsuccessful search for a Purcell book I needed, it was 5:30 . . . and the performance was to begin at 6 (90 minutes earlier than usual because the opera is so long.) So rather than run all the way to the opera and arrive sweaty and out of breath, I decided to take a cab. Hailing a cab on Michigan Avenue was easy, but we almost immediately found ourselves ensnared in an awful traffic jam, thanks to that particular street in the Loop being narrowed to one lane two blocks ahead of us. (I’m sure the cab driver would have never turned down that particular street if he’d known what was ahead of us.) We sat motionless in bumper-to-bumper traffic for what felt like hours, and because we were in the center lane, with cars all around us, I didn’t feel good about leaping out of the cab then and there. Finally, when I realized that it was 5:45 and we had traveled less than two blocks, I kissed the first act of Lohengrin goodbye.
Actually, I still got to see and hear act one, but only by watching it on the monitor which was set up in the lobby of the opera house. There were actually about thirty of us who for various reasons had not quite made it to the opera house for the opening curtain- and we looked a bit pitiful and forlorn as we huddled around that monitor, all wishing we could be comfortably seated in the hall and experiencing the opera’s full splendor. But once the singing began, it was incredible what a powerful spell the opera still managed to cast over us. And of course, from the comfort of our real seats in the auditorium, acts two and three were nothing short of thrilling; maybe by being relegated to the lobby for the first act, it was possible to even more deeply appreciate the glories which this masterpiece has to offer.
pictured above: The curtain call for Lohengrin, with tenor Johann Botha receiving a gigantic ovation from a most appreciative audience. The orchestra and chorus were also accorded huge ovations, and with good reason.