My first opera happens on an unseasonably warm 50 degrees February 15, 2005. The day is memorable because the artist Christo has recently hung 7,503 saffron colored curtains above the bends and dips of Central Park and their color wavering through a grey winter are an irresistible lure for a visit to New York City.
The Thousand Gates (Project)
Drawing 1979, Photo: Eeva-Inkeri
The day begins at 7:30 A.M. with my friend Rob who laughs over a cup of coffee about a recent episode of This American Life featuring a comedy duo who have their ‘big break,’ on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964.
It’s a hoot!
The conversation meanders with the ease of a French Café in summer and I enthusiastically talk up the Christo instillation that will only be up for the next two weeks. Rob is familiar with Christo’s wrapping of the Reichstag, not surprised as I know a stack of Architectural Record is on his shelf. He suggests we drive up to New York after work to see The Gates in person and while we’re at it, catch an opera. Then quite off handily adds “Opera will change your life.”
Change my life? Opera? I don’t think so.
Before we can argue about the merits of “opera,” The pledge of allegiance begins, our cafe’ closes, and our real day as two public school teachers waiting for first period is just about to begin.
Rob teaches music across the hall from my class where I teach art.
The year begins in September and is funny in its rhythms and in these early years I keep my door shut because the sounds from his music room of young middle school students sound like a gaggle of geese being strangled with vuvuzela soccer horns; there is a total identity crisis of beat and rhythm and his students couldn’t find a melody in a nursery rhyme. My door remains shut.
By November however my door is wide open. Dare I say, under his tutelage, these young students transform year after year into wondrous “musicians.”
I am not surprised by the miraculous 180 of sound he is able to produce in his students, he is a superb musician himself, and when not at work can be found playing clarinet in the orchestra pits around Philadelphia. You might have even seen him once or twice with light reflecting off a studied score of Puccini, perfect posture, pressed tuxedo, mousey brown hair, roundish Lindberg glasses, and deft classical precision.
Now, Not forgetting Christo and opera. Our earlier conversation on this day has become an overture of unstoppable momentum. The final bell rings and we pull out of the parking lot toward New York City.
Rob drives, we eat Japanese noodles, and we stroll in awe of how Christo has transformed a grey landscape into a realm of color. Beneath the tall banners I feel ennobled, this is what I came for. A Christian Monitor reporter picks up on Rob’s likability and asks for his thoughts. The reporter standing under a wavering halo of saffron thoughtfully jots them down on a small black notebook then disappears with his quotes beyond a darkening grey mound of bedrock. The two of us head in the other direction, toward the Metropolitan Opera, to hear what Rob still insists will change my life. Change my life? Opera?? I’m still not so sure about that.
I like the building though. The Metropolitan Opera is a wonder of verticality, lean stone and window. Inside chandeliers hang like starbursts.** I’m not sure I belong in a fancy place like this, but despite the opulence and the formal dress of patrons there is an inviting warmth. Maybe it’s the red carpets. Upstairs you can’t miss the Marc Chagall paintings that are so big you can view them from the road beyond the fountain outside. They are storied imaginations about the gift of music.
La Boheme:
We sit center balcony and when the music begins I am transported completely. Suddenly, that’s me on the roof top with Rudolfo and Marcello playfully crossing paintbrushes in a mock sword fight. That’s me falling head over heels in love with Mimi. By the time the stage transforms into a Paris street with real horses and a hundred children running around, I am stunned by the scope of the production. This is Opera? People from the audience are both crying and applauding. I have been deprived. Opera is a layer cake for the senses, but above all, the emotional content of the music is like a mirror to what it feels like to be human. I have never been so affected from a performance. I want more.
I think of Christo’s first gate, like my first Opera, as a point of passage. One that leads to a new place and maybe a new point of view. Then, there is a second passage, and then a third… and who can see now how far they might go.
Thanks Rob.
So what’s La Boheme all about? A group of artists struggling to survive a winter in Paris during the belle époque era. Speaking to my heart as an artist, it opens with Marcello burning his own written play for warmth. The characters, having little else sustain themselves on the small pleasures of life. Rudolfo falls in love with Mimi and we follow their growing relationship through love and jealousy.
* https://www.thisamericanlife.org/281/my-big-break/act-one
** Chandeliers by Hans Harald Rath
Notes on the production:
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Composer……….. Giacomo Puccini
Mimi…………..…….. Ruth Ann Swenson
Rodolfo ………..…. Jose’ Luis Duval
Musetta ……….…..Patricia Racette
Marcello……….…. Dwayne Croft
Conductor……….. Daniel Oren
Production………. Franco Zeffirelli
Metropolitan Opera
2/15/2005