I went to the opera last night. I got comp tickets from Cheekwood. A benefit of working for cultural organizations, nonprofits. Comp tickets. I took full advantage of comp tickets in my brief tenure at Japan Foundation, and was exposed to much culture that I never would have been exposed to otherwise. And I haven’t done a cultured thing in a minute, so, when I checked our company messaging to see if there were any updates I needed to know about, and I saw that tickets for the opera were up for grabs, I took ‘em. At the Andrew Jackson Hall, downtown Nashville, by the capitol building, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Rosa L Parks Boulevard, Deaderick Street, and Union Street. In there, with the courthouse, and other legal, administrative buildings, and the Polk Center, I guess that would be James K. Polk? A president? (Yes.)
The show was “The Barber of Seville”. That sounded good enough to me. Sounds like some Don Quijote-type nonsense, which I am all about. And that turned out to be exactly correct. It was just like Don Quijote, except that it was totally about romance, which is okay. They did a great job. And it was special, after I had to get my special comp ticket reprinted, waiting at the will call (why is it called that, anyways? Who is Will?), the girls at the will call booth were quite flustered with various issues, and a long line of people trying to get into the show. I could hear them talking, and I knew everything that were talking about. Trying different codes, looking up different names, and the girl said, with mild frustration, “Someday I’ll be able to log into this computer.” I know exactly what you’re talking about darlin’. And, that bad, huh? But you know, even a simple computer log-in can be difficult, because the passwords change, or they might be different between computers. It can be a lot to keep track of and keep on top of. They apologized multiple times, I said, “It’s alright.”
I got in, sat down, I was the first one. We were all held up by the ticket problems, all of our Cheekwood group. Kate came in about five minutes later, and told me that she read that the whole thing would be in Italian. That would have surprised me quite a lot, if the show started and they started singing in Italian, and they kept singing in Italian, and they never stopped singing in Italian. That was pretty great, and actually, I never got tired of hearing the Italian. There was an annoyance—the subtitling was on a screen that was literally up on the roof of the auditorium, and you couldn’t see the stage and the subtitling, all in one scene. You had to flicker your eyes between the stage action and the words. At first it was annoying, I thought it was going to give me crazy, but my brain figured it out. If you were in the front row you would have had a bad time. I don’t think it would even have been possible. Hopefully you spoke Italian.
Don Basilio was a winning character. We was so good that earned a loud “Bravo”!” from someone in the audience, when he received his ovation at the end. He was the only one to get that big “Bravo”, and it was interesting to hear a bravo used in the real circumstance, where bravo was truly used, and is truly used. The exact context in which “Bravo!” was meant to be used. Don Basilio was tall, possibly 6’4” or taller, with incredible, curly, shiny hair, that had a silver streak in it, and an amazing moustache. He wore a red, velvet suit with subtle stripes, and a green shirt underneath, a color of green that you really don’t see, like an off-colored army green. There was some 60s, 70s kind of styling going on. When he first came on the scene, someone behind me said “Waluigi”, which was pretty accurate. He also looked just like Borat, and I was mostly imagining Borat being up on stage, Sasha Baron Cohen. He had that exact look, and the same energy, mischevious, funny, strong. His character was interesting, a counterpart to the doctor, but not so obviously invested in the outcome, and not entirely loyal. You knew he was at least slightly unscrupulous from the very beginning, and his overall visage did immediately suggest so, but his first song, which was my favorite song of the whole show, was about slander. He sung a wonderful song about the joys of slander, how it starts off as an innoculous little whisper, and gradually gathers strength, explodes into an all-consuming firestorm, destroying all before it. At the climax of his great metaphorical crescendo regarding the powers of slander, he was lording over the poor doctor, and making powerful, aggresive gestures, and the doctor was terrifying, and literally crumbling before the strength of force of Don Basilio’s words. And when the song is finished, and the doctor is catching his breath, Don Basilio having just made such an incredible case for the use of slander, and the doctor just says, “No.” We are not doing the slander.
I didn’t know what to expect, regarding the opera. I had no idea what would happen, if they would sing the whole time, if it would be a play or not. It was a play, yes, and they did sing the whole time. Nothing was spoken, the entire thing was sung. That’s pretty amazing. And also, we could do that all the time. I said that Kate after the show was over, that we could just be singing all the time, instead of speaking. And wouldn’t that be fun? That could really be a great thing for us to do. Just sing everything, all the time. As an experiment, you just wonder that would do for humanity, if we had, even one day, a national singing day, where everyone just sang instead of spoke for the day. That could really bring some interesting results. It would be like The Purge, but for singing.
One of our Cheekwood crew had opera glasses. $20 off of Amazon. They looked nice. The magnification was not so great, only 2x or 3x. You lost more from being unable to have any peripheral or even, mildly peripheral vision, when looking through them. But I’ll tell you what – they looked cool as hell. And somehow they added a totally new level of ambiance to the experience. Simply her having them, and holding them, was elevating the experience. You would be better off with a pair of binoculars though, although they wouldn’t look nearly as bougie.
I was enjoying being downtown, in one sense, seeing the fine architecture, the buildings, and even, we had these nice gardens, and I was studying the plants on my walk, lots of oakleaf hydrangeas, lots of nice trees, a bioswale, and permeable surfaces to allow water through the sidewalks. Things were labeled, the bioswale, and an American Elm, labeled as part of the Nashville’s downtown arboretum. That was great to see, and looked good, and showed some good initiatives, taste, investment. But then, on my brief walk to the theater, I encountered many homeless, unhoused, people who were down and out, getting drunk on the street. A guy walked right in front of me, a group of four, and he was holding a Bombay Gin shooter. I saw probably fifteen to twenty homeless people on that brief walk, three blocks, in this fine district of town. Some woman was ranting, you see a lot of the ranting. And after my nice experience at the theater, on my way back, laying on the steps by the elevator that took me down to the courthouse parking garage, there was a large, orange, rectangular tarp. I could see it before crossing the street. And when I crossed, and got closer, I saw the hand sticking out. There was a person in there, living here, sleeping there. Right on the steps. At the foot of their tarp bed was a baseball bat. And that’s a living human, right there.
That just doesn’t make you feel good. That just doesn’t seem right.
I was prepared to pay for my parking, and I had pretty much some of the best parking downtown, at the courthouse parking lot. When I pulled in, they had a sign that said, “Event Parking, $15.” I don’t know if that applied to me, but I read on their pricing sign, that the max you pay for parking there was $20, which was totally fine with me. $20 for parking downtown and a show, can’t beat that. But when I was leaving the lot, I pulled up to the gatehouse, there was someone in there, and there was a little sign that said, “Insert ticket in yellow box”. I had to examine that for a second, because the little yellow box was suspiciously old-timey, having no fancy bells or whistles, no LED screen or any glowing buttons or switches. I put the ticket in as instructed, and the arm went up. I looked at the gatehouse person, but they weren’t interested in me, they were preoccupied with cleaning or something, and so, I just drove right out. I got to park downtown, for free. I’ll tell you what, I was feeling good about that. I’ll take any win I can get.
HAKUMUSU 