Campbell Vertesi

I had a funny experience yesterday that's stuck in my mind.  The company arranges for a cleaning service come to our artists' apartments once every two weeks, which is great.  Yesterday, the cleaner found a big pile of earplugs on my roommate's bedside table. 

He asked me completely honestly and earnestly what they were for.  At first I didn't understand; earplugs have a pretty obvious function after all.  I explained that sometimes our neighbors sing in the mornings, so the plugs are for sleeping in. "Oh," said the cleaner - "so they're not for... work or anything?"  

"No,"

"Oh good - because I'm sending my daughter to see the opera this Saturday, and you know... I didn't want her to go unprepared..."

That's when I figured it out.  He was worried that people might need earplugs in the AUDIENCE. Take a moment to process that.

This experience was a reality check for me.  We live in our little musicians' world and forget that for the vast majority of the country, opera is a completely foreign universe.  Foreign enough that people aren't even sure if you should wear earplugs or not.  Never mind the musical context, applause conventions, dress codes, and Italian vocabulary...this art form must seem REALLY unapproachable to people.  Kind of amazing - it completely re-frames the question of Opera's place in American culture.  I'm thinking about it a lot this week.

And I really hope his daughter enjoys herself this Saturday.  Apparently the Act II quartet regularly gets 4 and 5 minutes of applause, and often an encore... I hope she gets to see that.