FURTHERMORE
By Gerry Moran
There was a right schmozzle about opera, and ballet, recently when actor Timothée Chalamet (he played Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown and lost out to Best Actor in Marty Supreme at this year’s Oscars) said in an interview that no one cares about opera and ballet.
There was a swift riposte from the prestigious Metropolitan Opera House in New York who quickly pointed out that its performances were as popular and well attended as ever. All of which struck a note (an operatic note you could say) with yours truly as it was in the same Metropolitan Opera House that I attended my very first opera!
It’s the early Eighties, my wife and I, and our great friends Jack and Diane, had just finished a pleasant meal in an Italian restaurant off 5th Avenue. “So, what would you folks like to do now,” asked Jack, our host, eager to repay my wife and I for the hospitality we had shown them when they honeymooned in Ireland.
“What about the opera?” I jokingly suggested (I, who had never been to one before) “The opera?” Jack echoed with a hint of uncertainty in his voice. And then after a moment announced: “Right, let’s do it – the opera it is.” And off we taxied to the Metropolitan.
We had no tickets, of course. A minor detail as far as I was concerned. A minor detail perhaps in Dublin or Wexford but not in New York. Jack was optimistic, however, that we might acquire some cancellations – although the likelihood of getting four, let alone four together, seemed highly unlikely. “Any tickets at all will do,” we told him. We didn’t mind. We didn’t have to mind. There wasn’t a spare ticket to be had. ‘Sold Out’ and ‘Full House’ notices greeted us everywhere, understandably as the set of Puccini’s La Boheme (the Met’s most popular and frequently performed opera) was created by Franco Zeffirelli, the famous movie director who was also directing the opera. A massive attraction for sure.
Jack, however, was determined not to disappoint us. He retreated into the shadows by the side of the opera house and the last I saw of him he was in animated conversation with someone. Then he returned with four tickets. “Alleluia.”, he declared, “we’re off to the opera.”
Jack, I have no doubt, got very little change, if any, from $600 from the tout or scalper as he called him. The tickets, needless to say, weren’t great and we were scattered to the four corners of the Metropolitan Opera House. I found myself high up in the top tiers, near the ceiling, a place that gave rise to the expression ‘The Gods’, the seats being that bit nearer to heaven! ‘The Gods’ may also have been responsible for the invention of opera glasses, to help those ‘nearer heaven’ see a little more of the singers and set, although, in my case, a telescope would not have gone astray.
Indeed, at one stage I gently tapped the elderly gentleman in front of me on the shoulder and politely asked if I might borrow his opera glasses for a moment. He was quite taken aback and looked rather horrified at the intrusion but being a civilised New Yorker handed them to me. Obviously it is not the done-thing to borrow someone’s opera glasses, especially in the New York Met. This after all wasn’t Croke Park where you could borrow a match programme from your neighbour and share a bag of bullseyes or polo mints with them.
The opera glasses did prove enormously helpful for viewing Zeffirelli’s magnificent set.
Come the interval we rendezvoused in the foyer for flutes of champagne, no less, to compensate Jack for his sobering and costly encounter with the scalper. Our seats may not have been great but the opera was excellent, the set first class, and the performance superb.
I have been to several operas since, not least here in Kilkenny during our Arts Festival. However, the ‘sensational’ production of La Boheme in New York’s magnificent Metropolitan Opera House will be, needless to say, the one I’ll always remember.
