Last night I met my wife in NYC to see La bohème at the Met.
This was a Christmas present from the Mrs. to me, one
very appreciated. Way way back, before our second child was born eight years
ago, we made a point to see either a play or a concert or both every year. We
saw Kevin Spacey in The Iceman Cometh,
Quentin Tarantino in Wait Until Dark,
Kelsey Grammar in Macbeth, on and off
Broadway. We saw Aida, La Traviata, Oedipus Rex, at the Metropolitan Opera House. We saw classical
pieces performed three times at Avery Fisher Hall and once at the Kennedy
Center Concert Hall in Washington DC. We even went to a program at Jazz at
Lincoln Center.
Then came house, baby 1, baby 2, health issues and job
layoffs. No more high life of culture.
So the Christmas gift was a nice surprise. I had
listened to Puccini’s La bohème
twelve or thirteen years back and thought it so-so (I was much more a fan of
his Turandot). But I was game. It was
a night out, my father-in-law would be watching the little ones, and the wife
and I would enjoy a show and grab a few drinks and some eats afterward.
What did I think of the performance?
Obviously, it was phenomenal. The sets struck me most –
based on Franco Zeffirelli’s set design, they were authentically bohemian à
la 1830s Paris, oozing the poverty and wintry cold required for the tale. The quartet
of main singers, all in their early thirties I suppose, were excellent. The protagonist,
Rodolfo, was played by a singer who hails from nearby Montclair, NJ. The orchestra
and the conductor were sublime – melodies and motifs so emotionally driven yet
so unobtrusive to the action on the stage – I never experienced such a perfect
meld of music, singing, and acting.
Yeah, I had some nitpicks. Didn’t like taking a bus
and a cab in all by myself. As far as the opera itself, I had trouble
distinguishing who was singing in Act II, the café and Paris street scene, and
thought some stuff thrown in were unnecessarily ostentatious, but I guess that’s
par for the course in the Big Apple. The wife felt the second intermission was
unnecessarily unnecessary. And I didn’t think one of the characters was as good
as the wife did. But all these negative complaints were positively dwarfed by
the rest of the opera.
Then came the Brush with Celebrity.
During the first Intermission we went out to the bar
area on the Orchestra level for our free complimentary flutes of champagne.
Seeing one or two hundred opera-goers of varying qualities of dress. Saw some
tuxes, saw some tats. Lots of clusters of folks of all ages, groups bustling
by, icy waves wafting down the main stairs when the outer doors opened. We
scurried off to one side, then moved in close to the bar, off to the side, where
traffic seemed light.
After chatting about five minutes, I look over my wife’s
shoulder at a character who catches my eye.
In a sea of people, he’s alone, isolated just off the
center of the room, a few feet from the bar, five or six feet from me. He’s
doing slow three-sixties around, as if looking for someone, but I don’t get the
impression he’s here with anyone.
He’s wearing a brown fedora with a tan … almost a
leisure-suit like jacket. I thought he had one of those half-canes with the carved
ivory handle, but my wife, in retrospect, thinks I was just projecting off the
glass of alcohol he was drinking. But we both noted those rings – huge,
gigantic brass rings, at least an inch in height, adorning several fingers of
each hand.
Who is this man? I’m thinking. I’m also thinking I should
know him. He seems familiar. And if not, my writer’s eye realizes that he would
make a fascinating character in some fabulously bizarre post-modern fantasy. A
man who can rock the eccentric hobo millionaire look and not give a single damn
about what anyone else might be thinking is someone who interests me.
Our eyes meet again, and he’s looking right at me,
right into my eyes. It’s a vacant sort of stare, open-eyed, no concern
whatever, no fear, just reaching out as he slowly spins around, taking in the
crowd mingling about. There are patches of ill-grown facial hair, gray and
black and splotchy, framing his face. In a moment his back is now to me.
Then it hits me. I lean in to my wife and whisper, “Don’t
make it obvious, just turn around slowly. I think Nicolas Cage is right behind
us.”
My wife sloooooowly turns, inconspicuously, and I examine
another part of the room with extreme feigned interest. Sixty seconds pass and
then we look at each other. “That is one hundred percent Nicolas Cage,” she
confirms.
My mind is blown. This is the closest I’ve ever been
to a bona fide celebrity.
“Should I go up and talk to him?” she asks, and I know
she’s willing, ready, and dying to do it. “I’ll tell him I loved him in Moonstruck and Leaving Las Vegas and I’ll ask him how he’s enjoying
the opera.”
Images of her chatting with Nicolas Cage, motioning me
to come over and shake his hand overwhelm me. “Nah,” I say, “don’t bother him.
It looks like he doesn’t want to be bothered.”
Meanwhile an older blonde with a black dress has now
swarmed up to him and their chatting amiably.
We went back to our seats to await the beginning of
Act III, talking over our Nic Cage sighting.
Which inevitably devolves into us
doing our best worst Nic Cage imitations:
“So Mr. Cage,” my wife says to me, “how are you
enjoying La bohème?”
“It’s great, really great – needs more explosions
though,” I say in as close I can to his unique vocal styling.
I follow it up with, “Be on the lookout for ‘La bohème 2018’ starring
Nicolas Cage as Rodolfo!”
