One of my favorite Easter memories is of when I came downstairs and found a couple of Vivaldi LPs next to my basket. Now, Vivaldi isn’t even remotely my favorite composer, but I thought that was just the greatest thing ever. I listened to those records with every bit as much pleasure as I experienced when I devoured my chocolate rabbit (and of course they’ve lasted a great deal longer).
That’s the kind of thoughtful gesture my mom would make. She always started with something nice and then took it to the next level. Mom was fond of Vivaldi’s Guitar Concerto in D. We weren’t a “classical music” family – I was the first to fall under the spell – but Mom caught on fast. She liked Vivaldi and Bach and jogged to Sousa marches.
That’s not to say she didn’t always have an appreciation for it. She took me to plenty of piano and chamber recitals after she realized I had been bitten by the bug, and we attended every Gilbert & Sullivan production in the area. She encouraged me in my record collecting. I wonder if she ever thought, “My god, what have I done?”
In her last few years, Mom became interested in learning more about opera, after I had gotten her a nice compilation of arias for a gift. I could see she was a little puzzled by it at first, though Mom being Mom, she never would have expressed anything other than gratitude. But she actually grew to really enjoy it.
A number of years earlier, she had attended part of a dress rehearsal for “The Marriage of Figaro” I had assistant stage managed with what was then the Opera Company of Philadelphia. It made her proud to see me in the wings with my headset, doing something I enjoyed (which was mostly cueing singers when it was time for them to go on and signaling stage hands when to smash flower pots). There was a lot of funny business on stage, though no supertitles until the actual performances. But it was pure farce, with powdered wigs flying around and people diving under furniture. I think she probably was already interested in seeing a complete opera then. I don’t know why my parents couldn’t make that one – they lived only about an hour and a half away – since that would have been pretty much ideal.
Instead, I wound up taking her to a threadbare production of Boito’s “Mefistofele” at the New York City Opera. It was essentially the same production Norman Treigle had triumphed in, in the early 1970s, but 20 years later it was looking kind of shabby – which surprised me, since everything I had seen at City Opera up until that point (Korngold’s “Die tote Stadt,” Busoni’s “Doktor Faust,” Hindemith’s “Mathis der Maler,” Tippett’s “The Midsummer Marriage”) had been so good. I should have just taken her across the plaza to the Met for a buffo romp. It’s one of my regrets that I did not. Hopefully they’ve got “Figaro” in heaven.
Our last concert together featured the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia in Mozart’s final three symphonies.
Happy birthday, Mom. Thanks for everything.
