Our first opera was Fidelio, at La Scala, the world’s most famous opera house. When you, too, as a new devotee of opera, are ready to seal your bond of everlasting love with it, do so at La Scala, as enchanting a place as could ever be imagined. The beauty of the architecture is rivaled only by the beauty of the Milanese who fill the red velvet seats. In fact, the extent to which the sheer physical splendor of the Italian people shaped every experience we had cannot be underestimated.
We couldn’t find our own seats and wandered helplessly through the corridors until an usher wearing an enormous gold chain and medallion looked at our tickets and then led us to a private box. A box? Wasn’t there some mistake? The usher unlocked first our own private coatroom across the hall and then our box. Two grand chairs sat beneath the gold-tasseled curtains, and we sat in those chairs and held hands and felt generally breathless over the loveliness of it all—the rise of other boxes stacked on top of one another like the layers of an enormous and overdecorated wedding cake; the painted ceiling; the sweep of the stage where Callas had been cheered—and hissed. “This,” I said to Karl, “is a moment I’m going to remember for the rest of my life.”
We had come early, and so we watched the people mill around and were happy for at least ten full minutes. Then we heard the usher’s key in the lock, and a Swiss couple came into our box, looked at our tickets, and explained rather tersely that they had the rights to the chairs because their tickets were more expensive than ours. The lights were starting to dim, and with all the dignity and graciousness we could muster, we gave up our beautiful chairs. Behind them, we found six small stools pushed up against the wall, but when we sat on them we couldn’t see.
It was then I noticed that in each of the boxes across from ours there were two happy people sitting in chairs while several other markedly less happy-looking people stood crammed behind them, craning their necks. So we stood and craned while the Swiss held hands and laughed quietly at Fidelio’s jokes. My heart was overwhelmed by bitterness. But despite that—and the fact that I hadn’t been so excited about seeing a Beethoven opera in Italy—Fidelio won me over and made me forget my murderous inclinations.
Teatro la fenice, the opera house in Venice that is often said to be the most beautiful in the world, was devastated by fire in 1996. Although it was closed and covered in scaffolding, I went to see it anyway. Through the metal bars I could make out the faces of the busts that line the building, their marble throats and chins charred black. No city seems more suited to opera than Venice. You can easily imagine Verdi dragging himself over the narrow bridges, contemplating throwing himself into a canal after La Traviata’s disastrous opening night.
Bologna would be worth the trip even if you never made it to the opera at all. The Grand Hotel Baglioni was so grand that I could barely manage to tear myself away from the room. Still, when we did leave, we saw a magnificent production of Puccini’s Tosca that did more with a gray staircase and a few splashes of color than I would have ever thought possible. The Teatro Comunale di Bologna may be slightly smaller than La Scala, but it is every bit as stunning.
The Teatro Comunale in Florence is a modern mass of cement and glass, as vast as the others had been intimate. Fittingly, in this huge auditorium, we saw Verdi’s Aïda, the grandest of all grand operas. In Bologna I had totally believed that Tosca would die for Cavaradossi, but in this giant space Aïda and Radames appeared scarcely aware of each other at all. There was such a preponderance of gold lamé and bare-breasted slave girls that I felt as if I was seeing the Vegas version. And yet ... when the big production scene came, there was no elephant. There wasn’t even a horse. Still, the singing was every bit as spectacular as it had been in Milan and Bologna and made me wonder what it is about Italy that makes the opera there so electric. Surely there is great opera in America, but in the same way that the croissants are simply better in France, the opera in Italy is superior. Maybe it’s the centuries of practice.
On our way back to Milan, Karl and I stopped off in Lucca. The Teatro del Giglio had been recommended, but our visit didn’t coincide with their season. Still, we managed to find some very helpful people in the office who were willing to show us the theater, which reminded me of a beautifully painted hatbox. As it seats only 749 people, I could imagine that at times you must feel like the singers are reaching for your own hand.
We walked through the lovely old city until we found the apartment building where Puccini was born. There we saw pictures of his parents, the elaborate gown created for the first production of Turandot, and the final notes he wrote. On the first floor there were bicycles and stacks of mail, clear signs of daily existence. I wondered if I could move to Italy and live in this very building and attend every performance at the Teatro del Giglio. I was hopelessly, recklessly in love with opera. I had finally overcome the mindless “music” of my youth and had been rewarded with beauty and truth.
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