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.
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 50th 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.
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.
