Intermission
a creative coffee break from writing the play

We don’t need microphones. We’re in the theater.

Patti LuPone when the mics failed at a benefit for New Dramatists …so Legend has it (NY Post, 4/16/06)

I feel compelled to share a story about an experience at the San Francisco Opera, lo so many years ago. I’m aware that because I tell you I’ve been to the Opera, and that I rather love opera, you will form opinions about me. I believe these opinions will say more about you than they do me.

.My story meanders in my Irish-American fashion.

Back in the 80′s, a friend and I decided to start attending the Opera. Both of us came to the music as adults. Well, my Opera friend grew up listening to her mother’s Enzio Pinza records. Maybe that counts as opera exposure. I’m not sure. I grew up in a parental house divided by two demi-gods, Frank Sinatra and Hank Williams. I first heard opera music in public school. I learned to love a lot of Mozart, Strauss, and Wagner. Today, I love Verdi, Puccini, Glass, and Tchaikovsky.

As an adult, I came to opera as a means to reducing the stress of being newly sober. My Opera Friend suggested we start attending the opera together, and it was a year before we saved enough for a season subscription. Previously, I had volunteered as an usher, and never having purchased a seat before, much less even had a seat to sit in, a subscription was a radical idea. I knew, though, after standing through Wagner’s Ring Cycle, I wanted to finally sit down.

We not only became subscribers, we chose box seat tickets. I don’t remember how we latched onto the idea of box seats. I do remember being stopped by security each performance and my ticket being scrutinized. Clearly, I did not belong, wearing jeans and tennis shoes, in seats designated for the wealthy. Eating M&Ms in our box gave me an odd feeling of pleasure. Watching the audience was often as meaningful as watching the stage. I marveled at the number of box patrons who slept through performances. I knew they spent more than I did for their seats. Tickets not only cost a premium, a donation was required. My own donation was small; as large as I could afford. Later on, the Opera upped the "suggested" donation beyond anything I could muster without sacrificing rent, food, and a better pair of jeans. My box seat days ended. I like to think they figured out how to bar me, a scruffy, working-class girl from CoCo County, and keep the patron classes intact.

We had great seats, up close, slightly above the stage, and able to see the singers’ sweat. And there were no microphones for singers. We heard some great music, although tenors were usually a disappointment. Tenors never carried as well, as strongly, as sopranos. Until Pavarotti showed up. During his season of no-shows, he managed a performance of La Bohème. When Pavarotti sang, I understood the difference between an average tenor and a GREAT tenor. Recorded music cannot relay this kind of understanding. Pavarotti, along with Mirella Freni, filled the air in such a satisfying way, I have refused to see another performance of La Bohème. Seeing Rent a couple of times doesn’t count, ya know.

Opera combines elements I love, yet cannot abide in other art forms. There is bad acting, loads of melodrama1, and sweet music relaying horrible sentiments. A friend of mine, Baritone BB, says it is impossible to sing correctly, and act at the same time. Opera voices spoiled me, and made for a difficult transition to the microphoned world of musical theatre. Yeah, not to dismiss the colorful musicals my drunken mother took the childhood-me to, musical theatre found a place in my life long after opera. My love for singers who can fill a theatre without a mic cannot be diminished. In concerts or at cabaret when Betty Buckley or Patti LuPone steps away from the mic, and trust me, they will step away from the mic, spiritual awakenings result. Without a mic, k.d. lang’s beautiful voice is lost. (Tragically, she was once persuaded to step away from the mic at an otherwise lovely evening at Davies Hall.) The last notes of La Bohème’s O Soave Fanciulla are sung off stage. You have to witness the song performed live, in its context, to feel the achievement the voice accomplishes.

Well, I have traveled too far a-gone in my thoughts.

One SF Opera season, Der Fleiglende Hollander came to town. Sitting in our box seat, we experienced the worst, maybe the only worst, production we endured at the Opera House. The singing was not enough to carry the evening. The performance, which included animated set pieces, was vaudevillian and laughable. And we did laugh. We were the only people laughing. None of the snoozers complained. I don’t know why we were not thrown out.

A few days later, I compared notes with my Best Friend. He was at the same Dutchman performance. He loved it. I hated it. How could he be so wrong? Or I, in his eyes?

The next season, my Best Friend, gave me his seat to a performance of Bellini’s I Capuleti ed i Montecchi. He was ill, sadly the beginning of his passing from AIDs. I’ve since been very grateful to have sat in "his" seat, which he was assigned for many seasons at the Opera House. I didn’t have tickets to the Bellini opera, as I could not afford a full season of shows. Back then, the Opera had a series called "triplets." At this writing, the Opera calls the three ticket subscription a "mini." A-gone, again, I know.

My Best Friend’s seat, I knew was in the balcony. I did not, however, understand his seat was in the balcony. Not only in the balcony, he sat in the section known as the balcony rear. I did not bring binoculars, and the singers were tiny specks in the center of the stage. Somewhere, down there, I’m sure was the stage. The music…the music…was crystalline. It was sublime. The sound, magnanimous. Better than from my box seat. I think, though not, even now, am I sure.

Of course, then and there, I understood my Best Friend had seen a very different Der Fleiglende Hollander than I. He couldn’t have seen the show at all from his seat. He couldn’t know that shutters and doors opened and closed in inappropriate fashion, that the singers lumbered about badly on stage, fell over each other, and that mechanical set pieces failed to work as presumably planned.

Ohhhhhhhhh.

He only heard the music, savored the music, loved the music, that wafted up to the rear balcony, while he watched the little dots on stage. No wonder he enjoyed the Dutchman.

Although I have not tried with Der Fleig-YouKnowDutchman…I suppose, if you can only hear the music, there is much to enjoy.

Knock me over with a feather, will ya?

Of course, where we sit in the house informs our perspective, our experience. Of course it does. We all know that, right?

(Did I ever tell you, by the way, about the time in the Kennedy Center, and the guy sitting in front of us smelled bad-like-sleeping-in-the-park-BAD-and-the-people-sitting-on-either-side-had-to-leave-and-I-almost-barfed-it-was-so-bad, and somehow we got through it because we were swept away by Sondheim’s music in the form of Company?)

And some of us, a lot of us, cannot afford a seat on the inside of the House.

There are words I do not like. "Try" is one. The word implies something a person would like to do but cannot or will not ultimately do. "But" is another, implying someone is not being heard or that they are special in a way you do not understand therefore they are right and cannot ultimately be helped or understood or something like that. I, uh, try not to use words that do not mean what I say.

Writing the Play is about my writing process. There is much that is meaningful to me I do not write about here. If I did write about my obsessions, my concerns over the world, the things that are important to me, I would not write plays. I pour the important stuff into my plays. Plays are my compulsion, my disease, my joy, my confusion, my politics, my hope, my understanding and lack thereof. If I wrote about all that matters to me, I would not write anything meaningful at all.

And so, I have meandered and gone a-far.

1from the Online Etymology Dictionary:
1802, melodrame, "a stage-play in which songs were interspersed and music accompanied the action," from Fr. mélodrame, from Gk. melos "song" (see melody) + Fr. drame "drama" (see drama). Meaning "a romantic and sensational dramatic piece with a happy ending" is from 1883, since this was often the form of the original melodramas.

Although (from myself), opera rarely encounters a happy ending.