Toi toi toi Operaman

From my Facebook post for October 30, 2017:

A fabulous evening with the Barber and my charming host in the over-the-top and delightful Coliseum. Wonderful music, sprightly physical comedy, great company. Thanks, Stephen!

I'd spent most of the day at my cousin's house, pottering and tutoring, but got to the Charing Cross tube station in time to stop by the National Portrait Gallery (one of my favorite places in London) before meeting Stephen at the bistro by the English National Opera house.  The bistro was a brightly lit narrow room, with a long bar along the left-hand wall and small tables for two lined along a banquette to the right.  I snaked through the crowded aisle between these two points and found my companion for the evening, a tall smiling aquiline-nosed man in his late 70’s, dapper and genial.  We ordered a hummus plate and good champagne and commenced with the catching up.  His bubbling, now somewhat creaking, tenor voice talked of his fiancée, his recent years in Ipswich, the opera we were about to watch (The Barber of Seville), his relationship with the English music world, and news of old friends from Portland (where we met so many years ago.)  I talked of my recent 6 months as a nomad and my upcoming book plans.  It had been many years since our respective moves away from Portland, years which included the death of his mother and the death of my marriage.  But, his warmth and interest in the world around him made those years inconsequential:  we talked delightedly. 

Afterwards we walked down Piss Alley, a dark narrow cobbled affair with door niches at intervals. It was a connector between two major thoroughfares and a place for drunks and drug deals. Our destination was the stage door for the ENO, where he dropped off a bottle of champagne for the tenor, to whom we were indebted for our tickets.  Then back up the alley to the ENO’s Coliseum, a rococo structure, inside and out.  Here’s Stephen’s take on it:

It so happened that an old friend, KH was in town and this provided a perfect opportunity to get together. K is a violinist and although she has played as an orchestral musician in the Overture to the Barber, had never seen it and knew next-to-nothing about it. From the moment we went into the auditorium K was oo-ing and aaaah-ing over its splendor of the venue. We had excellent seats in the stalls and settled in for some fun. From the opening notes of the overture, K was smiling. Over the course of the next 3 hours and 10 minutes, I would glance at her from time to time and that smile never left her face! Not once did I catch her without that happy grin. And that made two of jus ‘cos I was doing a lot of smiling myself.

Afterwards, we shared a taxi to Waterloo Station where he caught a train back to Ipswich and I caught the Tube to Leyton.  It was the last time I would see him.

We met over 20 years ago when he visited my friends H and E, current caretakers for my cat Simone.   He was living in Marin County at that point, with an ex-wife and pre-teen daughter nearby. I never got his trajectory clear.  He was an English choir boy whose father flew planes in WWII.  I think he sang under the baton of Benjamin Britten. At any rate, he was involved with the Aldeburgh Festival and was invited to sing in the 50^th anniversary of The Building of the House:  he was one of 2 people who sang in the original performance for the Queen.  He was a Cambridge scholar. He was a fabulous cook. He was a solicitor, complete with wig, in Hong Kong. He hung around with Steve Miller and the band. But I knew him as H and E’s  LeBoyfriend, a charming and funny and erudite man who loved all things opera and was a kind and delightful friend.  Eventually he moved to Portland.  He worked for the Portland Opera a bit and wrote the opera’s blog under the moniker of OperaMan, even after he left the Opera itself in 2007.  At one point, when I first contemplated living with D, he became my housemate/catsitter for the duration of that experiment (the conclusion of which should have warned me but didn’t.)  We were witnesses and signatories to the marriage certificate when H and E joined the throng of gay couples getting married at the Keller Auditorium that giddy and joyous March 3, 2004.  (The Multnomah County ruling was overturned, and it would be 10 years before such marriages would legally stick in Oregon.) I was his guest at many an opera dress rehearsal at the same venue; as OperaMan he was comped for most of the operas.  The following email exchange is representative of this time:

To me:

See you at Jake's!

H and I will be the couple sitting doing today's NYT crossword and drinking many gallons of beer (she's a real toper when she puts her mind to it as you can imagine - sometimes she will even have a second pint!)

Love,

S.

To Stephen:

I'll be the person in the short tight black dress with the bright cover-up that is failing to cover-up sufficiently.

In 2009, Stephen initiated one of the grandest gestures in a life filled with kind gestures. The story involves Twitter and a Washington DC music teacher named Priscilla Barrow.  Stephen entered the Twitter-based OperaPlot contest (the idea was to summarize an opera plot within the 140 character-limit of a Twitter post.) He won the Grand Prize, 2 tickets to the Washington National Opera’s production of Turandot followed by attendance at the social event of the year, the Opera Ball.  Stephen decided to give the tickets away.  H suggested he choose a music teacher in DC.  At the end of the story, which involved such luminaries as Placido Domingo and Aretha Franklin, Priscilla was the belle of the ball, bedecked in jewels and beautifully wearing a dress donated by the Opera.  Stephen delightedly stage-managed from afar. The link to Stephen’s inimitable blog entry about it seems to have disappeared, but here are links to two other stories:

Shortly thereafter, Stephen moved back to England to care for the Aged Parent and delight his Facebook friends with her trenchant comments and his loving stories and political commentary.  His girlfriend was a frequent visitor, and I watched their long-distance love affair from afar, rejoicing in the happiness which glowed from the pictures he posted.  (My favorite was from their visit to Ascot.)  I visited England several times during his final years there, but I never met her and only saw him on that fabulous evening in 2017. 

A year into my nomadic lifestyle, I logged the following journal entry from Norway:

April 14, 2018

There is one cloud to my content, however. My friend Stephen Llewellyn, who took me to the English National Opera last year, fell and broke his neck. He's alive, but obviously in a serious condition. His fiancée posted the news on FB, and I just read about it. Reportedly, he is in good spirits and wiggling his toes, but Jesus. He's had enough health crap, with various cancer episodes.
 

The next 2 years would be full of setbacks and jumps forward.  But the love story continued, and his plans moved onward. In January of this year he was set to move into a house in Ipswich, to be joined later by his fiancée, who is currently working in the States as a visiting professor of music.  Sadly, he developed septicemia and by March he was in hospital. He died on May 8, of complications from COVID 19.  He was a smart, principled, kind, talented, and generous friend, and the world is much poorer without him in it.  I asked H if he died alone and she said that, because of COVID, his only contact with loved ones was a tablet, given to him by one of his many friends.  However, she wrote, knowing Stephen, by the end of his stay the staff were all dear friends.

I guess that is a reasonable epitaph for any life.

The Five Senses

As I sit at the brightly colored batik table cloth,
the scents of sweet, pungent spices permeate the air;
I can almost feel them, prickly and penetrating.
(The cinnamon predominates.)

And I can almost feel the gentle plucking of the lute,
today's choice in the daily experiment,
finding a new compoer, A to Z
(Today's is Luys de Narva'ez.)

The mug I made from speckled buff cradles the warm brown of the coffee.
I savor the sip of acrid richness;
it craves a complementary sweetness.
(Is the bread pudding ready?)

Tasting touching, seeing, smelling, hearing:
all present and accounted for, not one missing.
But I float in a sensory deprivation chamber.
(If a tree falls in the wood and no one is there....?)

Not so long ago I sat at a friend's table.
We clinked glasses, we shared smiles.
I can almost feel our voices, rising and falling softly.
(I am comforted.)

Invasion of personal space

The hummingbird showed up at the feeder today.  I'm so relieved.  There was only one day of snow, but it was a long day of solid wind and fall.  The snow piled on the roof and fell with a thump that sometimes shook the house.  I bundled in my sweater, enjoying the soft snowy light, but wondered where the birds were sheltering, how the little hummers with their high metabolism could manage.  I still wonder, but it seems they are fine.  There is comfort in that.  Maybe I cannot travel during this pandemic, but they can.  And they are visiting me in my solitary confinement.  It's nice.

They are not the only travelers.  I hear the constant whoosh and hum of I-40, down below my hilltop home.  Who is out there on a Saturday?  Why are they not sheltering in place?  It's not all trucks by any means.  Clearly, people are out and about.  Not me, though.  I find myself flinching from the very idea of it, rather the way I flinch when I turn the corner to my PO Box and see a person fewer than 6' away.  I have become a recluse, and other people are a source of fear and discomfort, an invasion. 

The crowded and crazy world has been leading me up to this point.  A year ago, I sat in the top row of the Saddle Dome in Calgary, Alberta.  I felt both acrophobic and claustrophobic.  I thought about random shooters and the long crowded hike back down the beer-sticky cement stairs.  Then I thought, no, I'm in Canada, I don't need to worry about gun violence in public places.  I breathed carefully and watched the Flames fall to the Avalanche.  At the end of the game, I followed the crowds into the rain and walked slowly back to the hotel, sympathizing with the low-spirited silence of my fellow walkers, such a contrast to the pre-game exuberance walking in.  The wet streets reflected white and yellow headlights and bright red tail-lights and neon blue streetlights.  People passed me, without a glance.  As I turned away from the crowds, my nighttime caution kicked in, and I watched doorways and approaching pedestrians for signs of danger, walking briskly and attentively in the way the self-defense people taught me:  don't look like a victim, don't look hesitant.  If your spidey sense tingles, cross the street. 

I remember another spring in Portland, 30+ years ago.   A workmate and I were walking down 10th street after a quick Safeway run on my lunch break.  We were talking animatedly when an unkempt man accosted us, asking for money.  I looked at him and said, "Sir, you are invading my personal space."  I was irritated, because he had panhandled us on the way in and I thought that once was enough for one day.  The trees were budding, the sky was blue, the street was clear of litter and this person was an affront to my pleasant day.

Now personal space has a whole new meaning, and the invasion of it is more than an affront:  it is an assault.  But it's an invisible assault, not overt like the guns in the mass shootings or the muggings on the empty streets in the bad neighborhoods.  One doesn't know how to defend from it.  My mom calls me after her food is delivered, panicking because the delivery people aren't wearing masks or gloves or standing 6 ft away.  "They are breathing on my food!"  I tell her that even if she did her own shopping, she could not guarantee that no one has touched or breathed on her food, and she would have even more people standing too close.  "Just wash the items and wash your hands," I say.  You can't live in fear, I think.  The world has always been dangerous.

Meanwhile, I watch the birds, envying their freedom, and flinch away from people at the post office.