A Night at the Opera

My parents wanted to set me up to be a cultured person. They sent me to museums, plays, concerts, Paris—and one indelible night in the ‘70s, to the opera. I may have been more entertained watching The Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera, but I see what they were up to almost fifty years later.

Opera was still a viable art form at the time, and Cleveland hosted a hoity-toity opera week. Until 1986, New York’s Metropolitan Opera resided here for several nights every spring. Each performance was preceded by a tony black-tie dinner that ended abruptly when a master of ceremonies banged a gong, signaling that the start of the performance was imminent. The dinner was better than the opera.

Soporific, excruciating, endless—these words come to mind when describing the experience. It was three or more hours long. I cannot recall the opera precisely, but I want to say it was La Bohème. I remember seeing a live elephant during an exclusive backstage tour, indicating that Aida was also on the docket that week. They should have put an elephant or two into La Bohème to spice things up.

Mom and Dad asked me how I liked it when we finally went home. Would I want to go back again the following year? Not a chance, I told them.

While my night at the opera did not succeed on its own terms, today, the memory makes me realize the lengths my parents went to nurture me and the differences between me and most kids. 

I was lucky to have parents who exposed me to arts and culture. They knew they had a different sort of project on their hands with me; I believe the opera experiment was about seeking to connect me with a culture and community where I might feel at home.

Now, at age 63, I am considering trying opera once again. Joe has made it clear he wants no part of it, and my teenage self can’t blame him.

But reports of contemporary fare—including adaptations of the 1987 comedy Moonstruck and the fantastic 1999 novel The Hours—have piqued my interest. I love the rock operas Tommy, Jesus Christ Superstar, and American Idiot—but rock operas are, of course, opera lite.

It may be a matter of finding the right performance for a new night at the opera fifty years later.

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