Opera or Ballet?

No contest, in my book.

We went to the opera yesterday. It may have been, by mutual agreement, our last. We’ve never been opera fans – and this most recent outing did not change that. I know there’s something in it I just don’t get. There has to be: so many are so enthralled, there have to be compelling aspects that elude me. I keep thinking (or perhaps, after yesterday, I should say “I kept thinking”) that eventually I’d meet my opera road to  Damascus moment, and all would suddenly be clear to me. I haven’t; it’s not. Or maybe I have. Clearly, at this age, I will never be an opera fan.

It's not for want of trying. I went to Wozzeck at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, on my first grand tour in 1973. I was high up in the rafters, so couldn’t completely appreciate the experience; I’m sure it was better from the boxes. I heard Akhnaten, and an early performance of Nixon in China, both at Houston Grand Opera. We even managed most of a rendition of Dialogues of the Carmelites – affectionately known in our household as Caterwaulings of the Caramelized – at the same august venue. All, perhaps, less than ideal choices for an opera novice.

I do remember a couple of compelling opera encounters. I will never forget Violetta’s (a.k.a. Sheri Greenawald’s) heartbreaking lament that she was “too young to die,” delivered at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis sometime in the late ‘70s – and delivered in English, so I actually knew what she was going on about. Why, oh why, do they still sing these operas in foreign tongues? How many productions of Ibsen in Norwegian have you seen, in Houston? The cuts between surtitles and stage are enough to induce vertigo!

And also, I had a brief, fun encounter with Albert Herring once, though, surprisingly, he went by another name offstage. (Hey, Albert, or whatever your other name was, didn’t we have a fun after-opera night?)

Aside from those, and the rousing oom-pah of some triumphal march in Aida, nothing else in my plus column for opera comes to mind. Though I did leap loudly to my feet at a rousing moment in Boris Godunov –  to the chagrin of my seatmate, who had bought the expensive orchestra seats – and to my own embarrassment, since I was leaping straight out of sleep.

Ballet – now that’s a different story. I still vividly remember my electrifying ballet revelation. It was 1967, or maybe 1968; it was St. Louis – Kiel Opera House – but no opera obtruded that evening, as Impresario, Sol Hurok, brought us Stars of the Bolshoi Ballet. They don’t make Impresarios like Hurok anymore; and they don’t make stars like the Bolshoi’s anymore – the stars of that day, anyway.

But the moment that changed my life, the one I’ll never forget, happened as The Dying Swan (a.k.a. Maya Plisetskaya) floated onto the stage to the haunting strains of Saint-Saëns, embodying said swan, choreographed to sublimity, by Fokine. OMG, those arms! There could not possibly have been bones in them. Or, if there were, they were the celestial bones of real swan’s wings, not the gross, clumsy ones of us land-bound humans. (If you’ve never seen her dance it, do your self a favor and watch the YouTube link.)

After that, and again on that first grand tour of mine, in 1973, I saw Nureyev partner Fonteyn – or so I remember it, though I can’t find online proof of such a performance, so perhaps it was really somewhere else, some other time. I saw Baryshnikov leap, shortly after he’d leapt through the Iron Curtain; likewise Makarova, though for her it was pirouettes instead of leaps.

On jaunts to New York through the late ‘70s – more for the gay discos than the ballets, admittedly, but you had to do something before the bars got hot – I saw Balanchine-conjured Festivals at the New York State Theater (as was then) – something old, something new, but all golden (nothing blue) – season after season, year after year. I even bought my signed Edward Gorey New York City Ballet poster on the spot. Those were the days when ballet companies toured the nation (New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Joffrey, and even those Russian troupes, Bolshoi, Kirov, that kept leaving dancers behind), so even us provincials could see them without having to venture far from home.

Why ballet, but never opera, I’ve wondered? Neither was a feature of the West Texas where I grew up in the ‘50s. So one would be as unlikely as the other. Perhaps my early career in dance had some bearing. I had been, after all, a child dance star in a minor universe. I’d even tapped on television as a child of six – for Cowboy Bob (or am I making that name up out of memory muddle?), wearing hat and boots, and chaps and glittering cowboy vest over my little-boy Texas cowboy togs – and turquoise and silver string tie, of course (or, at least, turquoise-like and sort-of silver). An outfit much like this one, but without the horse. Though to be real about it, the horse might have done a better job with the steps than I - and he wore his tap shoes all the time.

Experiences like that stay with you. I was in tap dancer heaven.

For a little while.

I turned academic and my dance career did not develop. But maybe the spirit didn’t die, as had my singer’s soul, when the choir director asked me NOT to sing out, since I insisted on singing off-key. Or maybe it had something to do with a few ballet flings - those legs!, ultimately more enticing, no question, than Albert Herring - those lungs!, which have their place, of course, but run a poor second to legs when the curtain goes down.

But surely there’s something more to it than a contest twixt legs and lungs. That makes me sound so shallow. But whether or not, I’m finding it comforting accepting, after yesterday, that my career as an opera fan – or rather, the worry over it – is at an end. One less thing to worry about in old age. Now I can concentrate on my plies and fouettes. (Those legs!)