Thanks to a lady named Agnes Varis (who works in pharmaceuticals and also went to Brooklyn College!), the riff-raff can get primo seats to performances on Monday through Thursday nights. Agnes and her hubby buy 200 tickets at full price, then release them at 6 pm, two hours before the show begins. The catch? People start lining up FOUR hours ahead of that, at 2 pm, for the chance at a deal. I decided I needed to try this at least once: I'm on break, it's between Christmas and New Year's, I have some time, and I love the Met.
The scene: Cold. Colder than outside, which is cold. The floor is so chilling that it's warmer to stand up, only there's no way I want to stand for four hours. So sit I do. Ass cold. In back of me are two students, one from Santa Barbara and one from NYC (who does this every WEEK). Two hours into it, they get me an espresso. We chit-chat. In front of me are a couple people from Montreal, reading guidebooks. The lighting is dim. It's a hallway, but feels like a parking garage. (I think they want to hide us desperate tightwads out of sight.) I read some of my new book, The Lazarus Project by Alexander Hemon (good, so far). Listen to Santogold. Shift my weight. Stand up. Sit down. Brr. There's a certain solidarity down here: people laughing and steeled, this is ridiculous—but I'm not giving up my place in line for anything.
At 5, a woman hands us surveys: How did you hear about the Met? Would you do this again? (Yes, everyone is thinking, it's already 5 and it wasn't that bad!)
At 5:30, they herd us inside and upstairs (the relief of warmth!), where we wait another half-hour. When I finally slap down my $40 for two tickets, it's absolutely triumphant. Felt a bit like Hands on a Hardbody.
Inside:
(after I took this photo, I was scolded by a 90-year-old usher)
Outside:
I invited my friend Chris, and it was his very first opera (unlike me, with a mom who started dragging me to operas when I was 6 years old, which meant years later, many years later, I started dragging other people). Right—I haven't even mentioned which one. La Bohene. Poor poets and writers living in an attic, agonizing over their work, falling in love, drinking and flirting too much, getting jealous, becoming deathly ill. As a poor writer (me) with a much-less-poor writer (Chris) both living in small apartments and dreaming of being artists, I think we related to the story a little bit (at least the agonizing part). The staging was amazing (real horses and donkeys, hundreds of people at a market, snowy parks, crooked garrots). And even though operas are melodramatic, they linger on the most important things. You know: Meet someone. Sing a song together, about rainbows in the eyes and tremblings in the heart and all those things we claim are cheesy but actually just wish we had. Fall in love five minutes later. Sing again.
Sounds pretty good to me.
2 comments:
What a fabulous adventure, Evelyn! Happy New Year!
I have 4 siblings, and of the 5 of us, I'm the only one who loves opera as our mother did. I've thought that perhaps "La Boheme" would be a good candidate for introducing my older brother to opera, because it's about relationships, which is his main thing in life, and because I think the music is more accessible than most. And the plot line isn't ridiculous, which is the problem with many older operas. I've never seen an opera at the Met but I've seen several productions of Boheme by various companies, and there are several good filmed versions I've seen. Recently I saw one that I believe was directed by Franco Zeffirelli, starring Jose Carreras, whom I'd never seen until I saw the Three Tenors, when he was well past his prime. He does a fantastic job of conveying Rudolfo's character, and his voice and the others' are excellent. Somebody famous sang Musetta - oh, Renata Scotto, who looked as if she was having a lot of fun.
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