By Rom Watson
c. February 10, 2015
While throwing out some old receipts, I came across a ticket stub for Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci, or “Cav and Pag” as opera aficionados call this particular double-bill of one-act operas.
Though the venue was an Italian restaurant near Chinatown called Casa Italiana, those who attended entered the Twilight Zone.
My wife and I went because we knew the man who played Canio in Pagliacci. Even though he gave us the tickets, the experience was not free, as we ended up paying for it with part of our souls. At least the food was good.
Though our acquaintance sang impressively, (as he always does), and some of the others singers were quite good as well, the production was amateurish and a chore to sit through. However, it wasn’t the performance that sucked the life force out of us, it was the entire atmosphere in that space.
Something about that afternoon made me feel like we had entered another dimension. When I looked around at the other patrons, I could tell they felt the same way. I think everyone in the audience was silently wondering, “How did I end up here?”
The people for whom I felt the worst were the ones who had been bused in from God knows where. They looked even more trapped than the rest of us.
There was one ray of hope in that hopeless situation, which I will describe in a moment, but when we got home, my wife and I both felt drained and exhausted, as though we had survived an ordeal rather than a matinee. However, my experience at Casa Italiana did not prejudice me against all opera. Though I doubt I will ever be a fan of opera, I have in the years since 1997 attended two others, (Baz Luhrmann’s La Bohème for example), and I know they can be enjoyable.
So what was it about that afternoon that was so enervating and defeating? What made me feel like it happened in the Twilight Zone?
My guess is that the physical space was imbued, haunted if you will, by years of mediocrity, so that even when good singers performed in the space they could not completely banish the ghosts of all the lesser talents that had sung there in years past. The air in Casa Italiana was thick and heavy, if not with the death of dreams then with the lack of them.
Every experience is instructive, however, and entering the Twilight Zone did allow me to observe something reassuring. The ray of hope I mentioned earlier began to reveal itself when I noticed an old acquaintance in the cast. My wife and I had known her briefly many years before, and then she drifted out of our lives. We had seen her perform in a musical comedy, and though the less said about that particular musical the better, this woman was talented. I had no idea she sang opera, and perhaps when we knew her she sang only musical comedy repertoire, but the saving grace of that afternoon was hearing her sing and realizing that she was much more suited to opera than musical comedy. It was gratifying to see that she had found her artistic niche.
She also found her personal niche. When we had known her years before, she was single and constantly on edge. Before she went on stage, (she was in “Pag” but not “Cav”), I saw her sitting at the back of the restaurant with her husband and young child. I did not speak to her, as I had no desire to remind her how we knew each other, but I was pleased to see her so obviously happy and relaxed with her new family. There may not be many happy endings in operas, but there are some in real life. We can find our place in the world.
I guess the lesson here is . . .unless you want memories to come flooding back, throw away your ticket stubs.