Opera Note: A Much Pleasanter Evening Than it Sounds Like

We spent the last evening of our New York holiday in a basement on Bleecker Street. It wasn't a speakeasy--I don't think they have them any more--and we weren't being held hostage, though some readers will think we would have been better off if we were. It was an opera --specifically, L'Amore di Tre by Italo Montemezzi, once a staple of the repertoire, now rarely heard, here performed as the inaugural presentation of the new Bleecker Street Opera. It is easy to think of so many reasons why this might have been a terrible evening.

The heater, for one thing. It made a racket, so much so that you thought it was part of the orchestra. And the plug-in electric harp: the conductor had to beg leave while he went back and stuck the plug in the wall. And the cast list: they'd mixed Saturday's list with Sunday's so you weren't sure whether the suprano was married to the basso or not. And they started late. And no subtitles. And the whole realization: the orchestra outnumbered the cast by about the same ratio as that by which the audience outnumbered the orchestra. And crowded together in a small house, you sometimes wished they'd (the orchestra) had phoned in from New Jersey.

Hell with enhancements, you say. Well, tastes differ, and in fact I have to say I enjoyed it a lot. One, I don't suppose I'll ever have a better chance to see this remarkable work, and to consider why it once held such a proud place, and why it has fallen out of favor. Two, I really like the idea of a shirt-tail opera company with barebones cast and instrumentation, playing on the edge of nowhere. And three--well, how to say it: the musicians, specifically the singers here. Okay, I grant it, they're not five-star presenters--if they were would they be belting it out in a basement? But they all sing better than I do, and I can't help but marvel over the life of someone so devoted to the music, knowing they're almost certain to make the big time, still belting it out night after night in a basement for audiences about the size of their extended family. I suppose they'd tell you that it beats selling shoes, except maybe in daytime they do sell shoes, or staff call centers, or scrape the gum off the bottom of bus seats, or do whatever else you do when you are determined to hang onto your craft in places where the heater squeaks and the plug keeps falling out of the socket. There's a certain heroism here that you have to admire and can it times even enjoy.