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Latvian soprano Marina Rebeka, making her Lyric debut as Violetta in "La Traviata" in 2013 (Photo by Todd Rosenberg, courtesy of the Lyric Opera) |
If I seem more attentive to factuality that the average bear, it's partially because I've left behind a paper trail. Thirty years of writing a personal column have a way of dispelling illusions.
For instance. I would have sworn on a stack of libretti that it was me who was the opera buff, dragging my unwilling wife to the Lyric. Because there were times, in the heyday — the decade when I attended almost every opera and took 100 readers to a special night — that she declined the opportunity, and I'd take one of the boys.
But researching my new book, I was writing about being a public Jew — not hiding my heritage, as some do — and became curious what the first reference to being Jewish was in my column. It wasn't some dramatic "I ... am ... Spartacus!" moment, but, fittingly, a light column about the opera, and how my wife was leading the charge to ... well, you'll see in this, which ran 30 years ago today.
Thirty years is a long time. And it does please me that this seems solidly in my voice, the way I might write it today. Either consistency, or, I suppose, lack of progress. Or both.
A sure sign of autumn, as definite as the Canadian freezer air whooshing over the city: my wife searching for the big pasteboard sheet of Lyric Opera tickets, which arrived in the balmy days of summer and was squirreled safely away.
She found the tickets, alas. I wasn't exactly rooting for them to be lost, but I wouldn't have been heartbroken, either. Six operas between now and Valentine's Day. Six.
And mountaineers think their sport is a test of endurance. Hah! What can climbing the Matterhorn demand compared with sitting through five hours of "Gotterdammerung"? I did that last season, and should have gotten my picture taken afterward, thumb in the air, a look of giddy victory on my face.
Granted, the music isn't bad. I even like certain operas. But nothing is so good that it doesn't start to grind you down after a while. If the Lyric offered an evening of naked supermodels performing the opera "Neil Steinberg Is Swell," I still would be fidgeting and glancing at my watch toward the end of the third hour.
Of course I could have resisted subscribing. I always consider objecting, consider waving the "Money's tight!" flag that my wife so happily hoists whenever I propose an entertainment more costly than tossing cards into a hat.
Marriage is a give-and-take, however, and I know that resisting opera would only come back to haunt me. I will be struck by some terrible disease, and want to go to the Mayo Clinic to see an expert, and my wife will give me that look and say, "Who's throwing money around now, Mister Fancy Clinic?"
So I didn't say anything. Besides, she didn't ask me. She got tired of all my throat-clearing and eye-rolling, and just went ahead and got them, without consultation.
So now opera is officially routine. An established part of our lives now includes plump middle-aged Italian ladies pretending to be German milkmaids at the top of their lungs in a language we don't understand. I'll just have to live with it.
I know what my wife will say when she reads this. "But you like opera," she'll say, which only shows how successfully I've been fooling her all these years. I see too many of those grumbly, scowling hubbies harrumphing after their terrified wives.
Can't be like that. Better to go and enjoy what I can and pretend to enjoy when I can't. Being Jewish helps. Like many Jews, I grew up attending services I only dimly understood, and years of neglecting my faith, such as it is, haven't made Hebrew any more comprehensible.
Growing up, I was trained to sit through it, nodding along and waiting for the parts I could appreciate.
Rather like opera. I'm surprised the two institutions, opera and Judaism, don't learn from each other. Oh, some synagogues have opera-singing cantors. But why not borrow more? Supertitles, for instance, those translations projected above the stage at operas. They might help enhance prayer services, too.
Or not. Perhaps too much is lost in translation. While the singer is reeling off a mouthful of Italian — "Il mio sposo! Oh Dei! Son morta. Voi qui senza mantello! In questo stato . . . un ricevuto foglio, la sua gran gelosia" — the supertitle is always something like: "My husband! We're in trouble."
Congregations might not be too happy to see some cherished prayer — Sh'ma Yisrael, Adonai Elohanu* — projected in front of them as: "Hey Israel! The Lord's One."
Opera definitely could benefit from a synagogue tradition called "staying until the end." There is a final blessing and everybody kisses one another and shakes hands and goes home and gets something to eat.
At the opera, about three minutes before the end, a shocking percentage of the audience leaps to their feet and bolts for the exits as if the place were on fire.
Any subtle sense of pleasure the music may have instilled is wiped away by the shock of watching these people. If your time is so precious, if you can't wait 10 minutes for your coat or a cab, then why are you sitting through five hours of Wagner? Why go out at all? Stay home and work.
My only hope is that these fleeing people, at some moment in their hectic lives, will realize they have lost their souls. I hope that, kneeling down beside Fluffy after she has been run over by a car, or watching their home burn, or whatever, they will look up and have a flash of insight: "This is because I left early at the opera. This is because we couldn't even stay and applaud for the 50 people who had just spent three hours singing their throats to a pulp. We have earned every bad thing that can ever befall us."
Me, I clap heartily, big, potching claps, drawing my hands about 3 feet apart and slamming them together, cheering. This is the best part of the opera. It gets the blood, which tends to settle during hours of inaction, going. And I am genuinely delighted and enthusiastic — I mean, the thing is over and we get to home.
A sure sign of autumn, as definite as the Canadian freezer air whooshing over the city: my wife searching for the big pasteboard sheet of Lyric Opera tickets, which arrived in the balmy days of summer and was squirreled safely away.
She found the tickets, alas. I wasn't exactly rooting for them to be lost, but I wouldn't have been heartbroken, either. Six operas between now and Valentine's Day. Six.
And mountaineers think their sport is a test of endurance. Hah! What can climbing the Matterhorn demand compared with sitting through five hours of "Gotterdammerung"? I did that last season, and should have gotten my picture taken afterward, thumb in the air, a look of giddy victory on my face.
Granted, the music isn't bad. I even like certain operas. But nothing is so good that it doesn't start to grind you down after a while. If the Lyric offered an evening of naked supermodels performing the opera "Neil Steinberg Is Swell," I still would be fidgeting and glancing at my watch toward the end of the third hour.
Of course I could have resisted subscribing. I always consider objecting, consider waving the "Money's tight!" flag that my wife so happily hoists whenever I propose an entertainment more costly than tossing cards into a hat.
Marriage is a give-and-take, however, and I know that resisting opera would only come back to haunt me. I will be struck by some terrible disease, and want to go to the Mayo Clinic to see an expert, and my wife will give me that look and say, "Who's throwing money around now, Mister Fancy Clinic?"
So I didn't say anything. Besides, she didn't ask me. She got tired of all my throat-clearing and eye-rolling, and just went ahead and got them, without consultation.
So now opera is officially routine. An established part of our lives now includes plump middle-aged Italian ladies pretending to be German milkmaids at the top of their lungs in a language we don't understand. I'll just have to live with it.
I know what my wife will say when she reads this. "But you like opera," she'll say, which only shows how successfully I've been fooling her all these years. I see too many of those grumbly, scowling hubbies harrumphing after their terrified wives.
Can't be like that. Better to go and enjoy what I can and pretend to enjoy when I can't. Being Jewish helps. Like many Jews, I grew up attending services I only dimly understood, and years of neglecting my faith, such as it is, haven't made Hebrew any more comprehensible.
Growing up, I was trained to sit through it, nodding along and waiting for the parts I could appreciate.
Rather like opera. I'm surprised the two institutions, opera and Judaism, don't learn from each other. Oh, some synagogues have opera-singing cantors. But why not borrow more? Supertitles, for instance, those translations projected above the stage at operas. They might help enhance prayer services, too.
Or not. Perhaps too much is lost in translation. While the singer is reeling off a mouthful of Italian — "Il mio sposo! Oh Dei! Son morta. Voi qui senza mantello! In questo stato . . . un ricevuto foglio, la sua gran gelosia" — the supertitle is always something like: "My husband! We're in trouble."
Congregations might not be too happy to see some cherished prayer — Sh'ma Yisrael, Adonai Elohanu* — projected in front of them as: "Hey Israel! The Lord's One."
Opera definitely could benefit from a synagogue tradition called "staying until the end." There is a final blessing and everybody kisses one another and shakes hands and goes home and gets something to eat.
At the opera, about three minutes before the end, a shocking percentage of the audience leaps to their feet and bolts for the exits as if the place were on fire.
Any subtle sense of pleasure the music may have instilled is wiped away by the shock of watching these people. If your time is so precious, if you can't wait 10 minutes for your coat or a cab, then why are you sitting through five hours of Wagner? Why go out at all? Stay home and work.
My only hope is that these fleeing people, at some moment in their hectic lives, will realize they have lost their souls. I hope that, kneeling down beside Fluffy after she has been run over by a car, or watching their home burn, or whatever, they will look up and have a flash of insight: "This is because I left early at the opera. This is because we couldn't even stay and applaud for the 50 people who had just spent three hours singing their throats to a pulp. We have earned every bad thing that can ever befall us."
Me, I clap heartily, big, potching claps, drawing my hands about 3 feet apart and slamming them together, cheering. This is the best part of the opera. It gets the blood, which tends to settle during hours of inaction, going. And I am genuinely delighted and enthusiastic — I mean, the thing is over and we get to home.
— Originally published in the Sun-Times, Sept. 15, 1996
* In the original, I used the English translation, "Hear O Israel, the Lord is Our God, the Lord is One." But it really only works if I use the Hebrew.
gorgeous dress
ReplyDeleteI liked this piece very much: it is gratifying reading someone openly manifesting sensibilities similar to my own.
ReplyDeleteI was introduced to opera in the mid-1970s by a friend and coworker who always bought two season tickets. The seats were first balcony, first row center .. absolutely perfect. I attended several performances at the steep price of $25.00 each. Presumably considerably more now. She was very much an opera buff, being pen pals with Maria Callas. We usually dined at the Italian Village, where she introduced me to both Domingo and Pavarotti, who also were frequent diners. Sadly, she died too soon and I have not been back. Oddly, I also began listening to country music around the same time and found them to be similar in their storytelling. Music is universal.
ReplyDeleteAh, you remind me of the time , decades ago , when I was on the Board of Jewish Education. After work one day, I headed over to the Federation building on Franklin , IIRC, for a scheduled meeting. But I was early and it was a lovely afternoon. So I walked around the block to Wacker Drive. Where I noticed people hoping to get tickets for that night's performance of Das Rheingold, at the Lyric, which as usual was sold out. But I spotted a guy selling a single ticket . On a sudden impulse ,I grabbed it for next to nothing, and skipped the meeting.
ReplyDeleteIt was an excellent seat, within the first few rows . And as luck would have it, that was the production where nude Rhinemaidens, sang from swings suspended over the stage. I did have a stiff neck at the end of the performance.
Sorry Leonard, as someone who witnessed that Rheingold 6 times between the the 1st cycles in the early to mid 90s and then again in the early 2000s the intrigue of the Rheinmaidens was not nudity - there was none - but the innovative bungee cords from which they were seen bouncing vertically (not swinging) from beneath stage view way up toward the top of the stage. August Everding was director and John Conlkin was stage designer with many artistic collaborators. I heard Maestro Everding quite a few times during that period speak in person about the cycle itself, and in particular the bungee cords of which he was particularly proud. The performance lasted around 2 1/2 hours, so sorry about that stiff neck. Tread lightly should you choose to see The Odyssey.
Delete...nude Rhinemaidens, sang from swings suspended over the stage.
DeleteI did have a stiff neck at the end of the performance.
Just a stiff...neck?
When Lyric offered the entire Ring Cycle in a single week, my family decided to forego the pleasure. But I wanted to climb that Everest. COVID intervened and the season was suddenly ended .
ReplyDeleteI later saw some of the productions. Hideous mechanical contraptions replaced the lyric beauty of those lovely swinging Rhinemaidens of yore. Saved by COVID.
than the average bear
ReplyDeleteDo you have any sense of when it became something you appreciated on your own? Was it because of a particular production or performer, or more an accumulation of familiarity and deeper knowledge?
ReplyDeleteAn excellent question, Coey. It is odd how our memories can evolve over time, and I didn't think to consider that aspect, which is pretty much the point of today's post. We've long assumed that Neil was the opera buff, but evidently not.
DeleteI read about some study that showed how fickle memory is. People are told to write down an explanation of something on the day on which they experienced it. 5 years later, they're asked to write down what they remember about it at that point.
Often, the memory is different from what they first wrote. But 20 years after that, they're utterly convinced that the memory that they wrote down after 5 years is more valid than what they wrote on the day the original experience took place. (That's a pretty lame explanation of the phenomenon, but I'm not going to bother looking it up...)
One of many reasons why "eyewitness testimony" has long been overvalued by the judicial system.
I wondered the same thing! Did the experience just grow over time, or was there a particular experience that turned Mr S into an opera buff?
DeleteI spent a lot of time experiencing opera and hoped for a similar transformation, but it never happened. My husband loved opera before he loved me. He'd get odd season packages -a mix of weeknights and weekend nights. I hated the rushing around for work-week performances. I had to take the train to work and he'd pick me up on the way to the Lyric. My memory is that the schedule was condensed into a few months during the coldest or busiest parts of Chicago winters.
Mr S took noted that people headed for the exits before the end of the performance. I was struck by all the people who left at intermission! The absolute worst opera of all was Lulu. It was written by Berg, who died while writing it. I can understand why. When we returned from intermission our entire section had bailed. Not just our row... the whole section! Except us. Without the expected human body heat to warm the place, the temperature dropped quickly. That performance took forever to end and I had to fight sleep.
I did discover that I enjoyed the classic operas more than the less traditional, and Mozart most of all. And it was impossible not to be impressed by Wagner.
If I remember correctly (which has been pointed out is not a given), the Lyric did 1 opera from the Ring Cycle each year, building toward a complete production of the Ring Cycle which was disrupted due to Covid.
My husband is no longer a season ticket holder - I've suggested we're old enough to attend matinee performances and should give it a try. He is looking for a production that sparks his enthusiasm. Maybe ONE opera this season.
When I was in 7th grade, our music teacher took us to the Lyric. I think it was Don Pasquale??? I recall enjoying it, though most of the kids were just glad to be out of class for the day. The only other time I’ve been was when I won two tickets to accompany you to the opera.
ReplyDelete"If the Lyric offered an evening of naked supermodels performing the opera 'Neil Steinberg Is Swell,' I still would be fidgeting and glancing at my watch toward the end of the third hour." A very funny observation, made all the more humorous because of its veracity.
ReplyDeleteMy wife is much more of an opera fan than I am. She actually subscribes to the Metropolitan Opera On Demand, which allows access to everything that they've ever recorded, I think. She listens while she's working -- I can't even imagine it!
Personally, I'm a classical music aficionado, but have had a very hit-or-miss relationship with opera. We've gone to plenty, but it's only the blockbusters that I come close to enjoying. Amazingly we did make it "through five hours of 'Gotterdammerung,'" 2 days after "Die Walkure,' though that was more of a bizarre challenge than entertainment for me.
I did seem to enjoy the production of "Faust" that our gracious EGD host took us and 98 other folks to in 2018 more than he seemed to, for some reason. Getting to chat a bit with him and his wife beforehand was probably the reason.
If it weren't for the subtitles, I definitely would not have attended as often as we have. I wish they had more of them, though they are distracting, of course.
"I clap heartily, big, potching claps..." Potching is a new one on me -- even looking it up was of mild benefit, but it did make me think of this meme from "Citizen Kane!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15baC8XkOfo
Comes from "a potch en tuchas"...Yiddish for a slap on the ass...a spanking.
DeleteThanks, Grizz, you've come through again!
DeleteThat'll teach me to rely on Merriam-Webster . com. Even Copilot offered the Yiddish meaning as a third option, I see now.
European Jews called Yiddish the "mama loshen",,,the mother tongue.
DeleteIn my case, that was reality. My mother didn't speak English until She was five.
Picked up a lot of Yiddish as a kid. Mostly from her.
Enough to know what my parents were saying.
When they didn't want us to know.
By the age of 14 or so, I knew.
Mark, you are right. It was an illusion, I had a good imagination bsc then. Until COVID we always went to about half a dozen performances a year. But very rarely since then. I did see that amazing production of Medea last year..
ReplyDeleteSame here-I love opera and my husband just tolerates the evening. So now I just listen to my cds of my favs. So I gave up opera performances and he gave up baseball games. We both love the CSO and hockey games.
ReplyDelete