Author: Philip Gardner

On September 26th, 1966, I attended my first opera at the New Met: a performance of Puccini’s TURANDOT starring Birgit Nilsson (above), Franco Corelli, Teresa Stratas, and Bonaldo Giaiotti, conducted by Zubin Mehta.

A few weeks earlier, I had taken an over-night bus from Syracuse to New York City and joined the ticket line for the opening performances at the new opera house. Read about my adventure here.

I had seen the Met’s Cecil Beaton production of TURANDOT previously, at the Old Met. It was considered quite lavish at the time, but within a couple decades it was wildly surpassed by the elaborate Franco Zeffirelli setting. Birgit and Franco seemed thoroughly at home on the Beaton sets, their by-play with Turandot’s all-day-lollipop/sceptre, was always commented upon by the fans, who gauged the scene to determine how well the two superstars were getting along on a given evening.

My diary entry was very brief:

“First performance at the New Met!! Magnificent evening, dazzling experience. After hearing Nilsson and Corelli on Saturday matinee broadcasts, it was electrifying to hear them “live“; you can’t really tell how immense and thrilling their voices are over the radio. They are great stars!

Teresa Stratas was excellent as Liu, and my favorite bass, Bonaldo Giaiotti, sounded great. Uppman, Nagy, Anthony, and Goodloe – all singers know from the broadcasts – were fine. Mehta tremendous!

There was huge applause after each act, and many curtain calls. The Corelli fans in particular went crazy.”

After the ovation finally ceased, I went to the stage door where a huge crowd of people were waiting to meet the artists. They finally came out, and they were all very nice to me. Stratas signed my program, and Birgit signed the photo at the top of this article.

I’d brought along the above photo of Corelli as Radames for him to sign; he seemed genuinely pleased to see this picture of himself, and the fans gathered around him were gasping, “Where did you find this???” 

I remember that I slept very little after getting back to The Henry Hudson Hotel that night. I was really wound-up: I had been going to the opera sporadically since 1962 – plus catching every Met broadcast and building a big record collection. But this evening marked the start of the next phase of my operatic career. I began coming down to New York for long weekends, taking the over-night bus from Syracuse and staying at the Henry Hudson; opera was everything to me.

After spending the Summer of 1974 on Cape Cod with TJ, working for a small ballet company, I moved into his dorm room at Sarah Lawrence College where we spent the 1974-1975 academic year together. We went down to the opera (and also the ballet!) constantly, taking a bus from Bronxville to the A train station at 207th Street – the station that’s now a block from where I live.

After he graduated, we moved to Hartford; we were poor, and trips to New York City were few and far between. But after we broke up, I got my own place place and began spending frequent long weekends in NYC again. My promiscuous phase – can 25 years be considered a phase? – started at this point.

Finally, in 1998, shortly before my 50th birthday, I moved to New York City. This had been my plan since that first solo excursion to join the Met ticket line in late Summer 1966, but Hartford had been a 22-year detour.

Now, at last, I was home.

~ Oberon