La Boheme

This week Steven and I had the great good fortune to attend the Dallas Opera's dress rehearsal of Puccini's "La Boheme". We went as guests of Steven's soccer coach who was performing in the opera chorus crowd scene. If I could figure out how to insert a photo at this point, I would. Instead you must just imagine the scene. Starving artists and poets are celebrating Christmas Eve in a cafe in the Latin Quarter of Paris. Love is in the air. Band members march through the square in bright red poofy clown pants, blue jackets with gold braid, and red Turkish fez hats, pretending to play flutes as they wind through the crowd of cartwheeling urchins. Perfect snowflakes fall while the tuberculine heroine sings her lungs out. It is just like my life, except for the singing part. When I had pleurisy in '95, I could barely inhale, let alone sing arias about embroidering flowers. To clarify, I could embroider flowers, but not sing about it, and couldn't do either while taking codeine. All in all, I sympathize with our heroine, Mimi. If you are going to embroider flowers, I really suggest being ten years old and sitting in a shady treehouse.

"La Boheme" did lead me to memories of my cold and starving artist days. I have written before about my art student experiences while oil painting in the converted brewery warehouse. We couldn't burn poetry or scripts in a furnace like Marcello and Rudolfo. If we had used a space heater the whole building would have erupted in flames from the turp fumes and rolls of canvas, not to mention all the dead bugs. We painted while wearing many layers of socks and sweaters, long johns, stocking caps, and sawed-off gloves. We drank tea heated with those electric coils, and adjorned often to the nearest warm tavern.

My favorite student watering hole was a bar in the backstage area of the former ornate gilded theatre turned into a doomed single-screen movie theater. The bar allowed one to enjoy a gimlet while staring up into catwalks, drops, and hanging weights. The entrance was down an icy alley to the old stage door. What a space that would have been for an artist studio/home!

Steven had to pick me up from work to drive to the opera hall. As we were going down the highway of death he asked me if I had ever heard a rustling in the glove compartment. Naturally I remarked that he should let the hamster out more often. Perhaps we have rodents eating the turn signal wiring (see entries about Cletus and Goober!). After the opera ,when we found ourselves lost in a seedy part of downtown Dallas, we were particularly concerned about big-fanged small mammal invaders blasting out of the glove box.

Coach wanted us to meet him at intermission for a quick backstage tour. Here is my true confession! My worst nightmare is when the beautician hands me the mirror to hold while she turns me around to view the back of my neck. I can no more look in the mirror to use a curling iron than I can play professional hockey. Something just shorts out in my brain, so when Coach asked us to meet him at the stage right door I conferred with my drama teacher associates for clarification. Actor's right is viewer's left, but we still missed our chance for a backstage tour.

After I switched from being a poor, cold art student to being a poor, cold library employee, I quit singing about embroidery and got married. Alas, I walked home through the snow to our apartment one freezing night to find that my law student spouse had sold our waterbed, beanbag chairs, concrete block & board bookshelves, and macrame plant-hangers to a foreign graduate student for $200.

Many thanks to Coach and the Dallas Opera for this musical trip down memory lane!