A Night at the Wet Opera
A Night at the Wet Opera
All day, it had been threatening to rain but we decided to risk it and go to the park to see the opera performance. Neither of us had seen a show in person since the shut down so it felt like a big event.
We showed our vaccine passports at the vaccine entrance of the Bryant Park lawn and were directed to the folding chairs and tables we could take and place anywhere in the area. There was a cordoned off section way at the back for the socially distanced chairs set up for the non-vaccinated. (This event, btw, was the first time I got to show my vaccine passport. I was so excited.) We found a table and settled in. Almost immediately, we were reminded of what New York audiences for free stuff are like. (Very annoying — there’s always some intense rule enforcer who’ll enforce rules that don’t even exist.) Several people asked if we were using our table and were miffed when we said yes, despite the fact that were many freely available scattered around the edges of the lawn. There was a family in a line in front of us who seemed to be playing musical chairs and they were taking non-stop selfies with one another. And then it started to rain. Only a little bit at first. The selfie family started trading umbrellas around instead of just chairs. And almost no one left the park. The show was about to start after all!
It rained. The show started. If the response to its starting was muted, it’s only because everyone had umbrellas in their hands. By the time Carmen finished her aria, the audience had figured out how to cheer in the absence of clapping and there was some very cathartic cheering.
Because, of course, we weren’t just cheering for Carmen; We were also cheering for ourselves, this audience that would not be pushed around by some rain. A lot of rain by this point, btw. We are sitting in the rain in a park watching a fair to middling opera performance and I was weeping my face off. To hear a performer singing after so long, just cracked me open. A lot of it was not very good but I honestly did not care at all. I was so grateful for their cheeseball narration and hokey costumes, for their two person choruses attempting to stand in for the usual giant choruses.
Next to us, the young women in their sun dresses who’d been sharing some crackers and cheese at the start, huddled together under a clear plastic tarp. They eventually just dispensed with their tarp and let the rain pummel them while the toreador sang his song. They happily drank their hard seltzers, soaking wet.
The older man in a sweatshirt, his cane leaning against his leg, let the rain soak through his hood for a while but he finally surrendered and left his single chair.
Then the thunder started and so, before the toreador could conclude his number, the Artistic Director appeared ruefully onstage, clearly there to end the performance, and so the toreador made his own impromptu conclusion with a flourish.
The singers took their bows. The audience cheered and then flooded out of the park. Almost literally. The puddles were ankle deep.
On the subway steps before us, the little boy was joking with his family about his remarkable experience at Wet Opera.
Wet Opera was really quite beautiful. I was so moved by this crowd that would not move. We were told we were at the first opera performance in NYC since covid and it felt like that really meant something to this crowd. This crowd did not strike me as a particularly opera opera crowd. They didn’t seem to be particular fans of any of the singers or have a relationship with this company. They just felt like it was important to sit in a park together and see a show. Rain or no rain.
During one of the arias, a few tables away from us, someone popped a champagne cork. They all started giggling from the embarrassment of having made a big noise in the middle of a show and the giggles were contagious. We’re all so unused to being together like this — a simple thing like a cork pop just reminded us we’re all here together. We’re all hearing this music. We’re all feeling this rain. We see the rivulets streaming on the backdrop. We definitely all heard that cork and the giggles around us. Whatever happens, we’re all feeling it together.
Even the thunder, which sends us home.
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Originally published at http://artiststruggle.wordpress.com on August 8, 2021.
