April 11, 2024

Dateline – Manhattan

And so the long weekend of fun, frivolity, and theater commences. I had planned on sleeping in this morning as my flight wasn’t until 11:30 but work had other ideas and my phone blew up with texts regarding a sick patient starting around 6:45 am. You can let your immediate colleagues know when you’re off on vacation but there’s no real good way to inform the entire health system and it’s usually easier to deal with issues yourself rather than try to pass them off to covering people who have no idea as to what the nuances of the situation may be. I did manage to calm it all down before, 8:00, took some time to snooze and luxuriate and have a large breakfast and then headed off to the airport in an Uber to meet up with Patti Steelman, my partner in crime for the weekend.

Off we jetted to Laguardia without incident, landing amidst intermittent showers and ribbons of fog. The new terminal at LGA is complete and very nice. Much better than the dodging of construction zones that’s been going on out there over the last decade or so. Bags grabbed and into a cab to Manhattan to the Ritz Carlton at 28th and Broadway, much nicer than I can usually afford courtesy of Patti’s bonus points. We are ensconced on the 29th floor in a very nice room with a view of the Empire State building, that is if you stand in the window and crane your neck to the left.

We opted for dinner in one of the hotel restaurants, Bazaar (chef Jose Andres who did not appear to be actually on the premises, just lending his name) which was a Japanese/Spanish fusion tapas place. The food was interesting and very good. I had scallops and chicken croquettes. Patti, being vegan, did not but has an excellent mushroom ramen and a cucumber salad. Then off to the subway and uptown to Lincoln Center for Turandot at the Met with Christine Goerke, Roberto Alagna, and Angel Blue. Patti has never really been to the opera before so I figured the Met with a full Zeffrelli extravaganza would be a reasonable introduction.

Turandot holds a special place in my heart as it was the first opera in which I appeared on stage. I’ve probably told this story before so, if you know it, you can stop reading here, but it bears repeating. It was fifteen years ago, January of 2009. Tommy had joined the Opera Birmingham chorus several years previously. I had been appearing in musicals in character roles for roughly five years and begun to become known as an actor who could sing a bit. I left all of the serious music – opera chorus, symphony chorus – to Tommy. he was well trained and had years of experience. I did not. He had begun rehearsing Turandot with the opera chorus in the fall of 2008 for its January performance. I wished him well. I wasn’t involved in anything particular at that point and was probably playing catch up with work (and putting my packet together for promotion from associate to full professor).

We got through our usual marathon of holiday activities that year and Tommy was very excited about the arrival of the principal cast (Lori Phillips, Roy C. Smith, Veronica Chapman-Smith, Corey McKern, Corey Trahan, Tracy Wise and maestro Joey Mechavich). They came into town the first week of January for the final three weeks of rehearsal/production. However, there had been some sort of miscommunication. There was supposed to be a chorus of forty plus but only a chorus of twenty had been prepared. Major musical disaster and the opera began to call everyone in town with music/theater stage experience. ‘Hi… what are you doing the next three weeks? Can you learn Italian? Ever wanted to sing in an opera?’ I got one of those calls. When Tommy got home that evening, I told him about this very odd call I had gotten inviting me to join the opera chorus and that they must be mistaken because I couldn’t possibly sing opera. He told me nonsense and that I should definitely do it. So, the next day, I turned up at rehearsal, was handed the chorus score to Turandot and plunged in.

I was totally lost the first week. Fortunately, my old friend Randy Mayo was playing the mandarin and singing the chorus bass line so I did what I have done many times over the last couple of decades – Listened to what he was doing and tried to do the same thing. Things got better but the pick up nature of the chorus (and the orchestra – a whole other story) led to some rather frayed nerves on stage and in the pit. More than a few doors were slammed backstage at the Alabama Theater. There was no time to really do proper staging rehearsals for the chorus as every spare minute had to be spent drilling music (I never did learn most of Act III other than the right vowel sounds). So the show basically became large groups of gray clad Chinese peasants rushing on and off left and right on cue, like a large gray curtain that would envelop the stage for the choral moments.

The show went up, was a good deal better than anyone expected and I was hooked. Fifteen years later I remain in the Opera Birmingham chorus (next appearance at the end of the month in Opera Unveiled – a concert of opera’s greatest hits). I’ve been a Chinese peasant, a Scottish noble, a dissolute Italian Renaissance courtier, a priest, a drunk, an Egyptian soldier, and a gypsy, singing in multiple languages. Opera. There’s nothing like it.