Conversation At The Concert

My father was at his happiest in a museum, at a ballet performance, song recital, symphony concert, opera performance, and the theatre - especially the theater. In a museum, he would wander happily by himself and find enormous refreshment in the process.

The other arts required him to sit amongst other people, and this circumstance was a challenge for him. People open cellophane wrapped candies, they cough, they stamp their feet, they arrive late, but worst of all, they talk....before the performance (often) and sometimes during the performance (less frequently).

He required some stillness, probably to allow him to focus on what he was about to watch, and that focus ran from the history of the piece, his knowledge of it (generally considerable), other performances he had seen over the years, and when he was done, he considered himself prepared.

God help you if you were a chatterbox. First you got the turn of the head, then the turn and stare, then the clear the throat, turn, and long stare, and that didn't shut you up, you got a succinct sentence. One night in Boston at the Shubert theatre, he and I, on a high school tour to look at colleges) saw a pre-Broadway performance of "The Most Happy Fella." Sitting behind us were three local dowagers, who chattered on through the overture, so my father went into his drill, finally finishing with the following statement: Will you old broads please shut the XXXX up, so that I can enjoy the performance?"

I sunk into my seat, but for the rest of the evening with Robert Goode and Jo Sullivan and the rest of the cast, we had absolute quiet in the row behind us.

Afterwards, I asked him about what I had witnessed, and he pointed out that he had paid good money for the seats and was entitled to enjoy all of the performance.

For the last several decades, I have employed the same behavior continuum in similar situations. Yesterday, at a morning concert of the Minnesota Orchestra (yeah, I'm that old) three Twin Cities dowagers chatted right up to the first note of the Sibelius, the Grieg, and the two Mozart pieces. I wanted to repeat verbatim what my father had said forty-five years ago on a night in Boston, but here in the midwest our niceness is based on a thick passive aggressive mode, and all I could manage was "And now, we'll all be quiet for Mozart."

OK, so it wasn't dramatic, but it worked, and it reminded me that though my father has been gone for many years, this apple didn't roll very far from that tree.