| | Namesake!!!
I am so sorry!
My timing is completely off from running after zillions of dollars so I can buy paintings...
To make it up, here is some serious opera. This whole thread reminded me of a story I read in a book on famous opera disasters once (sorry - can't remember the name or author). I think this happened at the San Francisco Opera a couple of decades ago.
They were producing Tosca and it was the last opera of the season. This usually happens with Tosca because season budgets are pretty thin pickings by then. Tosca has a small cast - very little chorus - and a mere non-singing firing squad at the end. So it is comparatively cheap to produce.
What happens in the story is that Cavaradossi, the hero, is to be subject to a mock execution, then run off with Tosca, the girl the good guy is supposed to get at the end, and they live happily ever after. So they both think. Who set this charade up was the chief of the secret police, the dastardly Scarpia, who wanted to hunker down on Tosca and traded her boody for Cavaradossi's hide.
But Tosca didn't play by the rules and stabbed Scarpia in the heart (killing him) at get-down time. Scarpia didn't play fair either because he had the firing squad load up with real bullets. He just didn't live to see Cavaradossi get shot dead from his dirty trick. So when Tosca tries to waken Cavaradossi, she finds he really did bite the big one, and, grief stricken, hurls herself off a very high wall they call a parapet to her death while the orchestra kicks ass.
That's the way it's supposed to be.
Apparently this particular season was tough. Lots of emergencies all season long, but opening night for Tosca finally came. The director was frantic from almost running out of money and time. He had at least obtained a bargain-basement firing squad from a local college football team. He didn't rehearse them - what for? They didn't sing.
During the first two acts, these football players, strutting around backstage in their fancy threads, kept coming over and worrying him to death with, "When do we go on?" and "Who do we shoot?" and "Are the guns really loaded?" and so on. Since the director was going nuts making a small miracle happen that night, he kept putting them off.
Finally the end of the third act arrived and he called the young men over to give them instructions - something like, "On cue, you march out on stage, slowly raise your rifles and, on another cue, shoot the principal."
So off they went.
Then they came back.
"What do we do then?" The director, frantic because their cue was coming up, told them to exit with the principals, which is a standard instruction for minor characters. Then he impatiently shooed them away.
Here is what happened:
On cue, these decked-out hunks sauntered on stage. They started to raise their rifles but stopped dead in their tracks. There was no "principal." There were two principals. A man and a woman. Both were looking at them. Hmmmm. What to do? They chose the guy.
The music was kicking ass and Cavaradossi stuck out his chest in a melodramatic heroic-tragic pose. The football players think that a guy about to be tackled wouldn't react like that at all, so they swung their guns over at Tosca. Of course, she started making all kinds of "no" signals at them without trying to be too obvious to the public.
Bingo. She's the one all right. So on cue, they opened fire on her with all they had while Cavaradossi, at the other end of the stage, toppled over mortally wounded.
They watched perplexed as the rest unfolded. Once Tosca climbed onto the parapet, sang, "O Scarpia, avanti a Dio!" and hurled herself off, they looked at each other and shrugged. She was the last principal alive on stage and they were supposed to exit with her. So the obedient firing squad committed mass suicide - one-by-one - jumping off the parapet.
(pause for reflection...)
Now let this be a lesson to all football players who sign up for the firing squad on SOLO.
Michael Stuart Kelly - Newberry Groupie
(Edited by Michael Stuart Kelly on 4/20, 1:55pm)
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