I’ve always loved opera. So when my then 9-year-old son Shaun’s piano teacher told me he had an excellent ear and voice, and suggested I bring him to audition for the Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus, I was overjoyed. I immediately called Elena Doria, the Children’s Chorus Concert Mistress, for an audition, alerting her that Shaun had almost no musical training. “Fine,” she said, “I prefer him that way.”
As we excitedly entered the Met Stage Door and the three of us walked towards Elena’s studio, I teased her saying, “Here’s your next victim.” She had him sing “Happy Birthday,” and he was able to follow her change in octaves on the piano. He was somewhat nervous, and couldn’t reach the high notes, but Elena showed him how to open his throat. He sang higher. He was “in.” (Part of his acceptance, I later learned, was that he was skinny enough to fit in the costumes. Being handsome didn’t hurt either).
I was ecstatic, but felt I had pulled a little trick on Shaun, getting him into the opera just before he was going to learn he was supposed to hate opera. I warned Elena not to make him into a singer; I merely wanted someone with whom to go to the opera in my old age.
Shaun told me his weekly singing classes were “a little boring,” but he persisted because everyone was awed he was accepted at the Met. Friends thought him a budding Pavarotti. He enjoyed, but was slightly puzzled by, the admiration. At first he never sang at home, and it wasn’t until several months later, when a friend asked, that he sang in Italian, from the choruses of La Bohème and Turandot. I was thrilled.
Immediately, I bought a tape of Turandot for us to learn, an unfamiliar opera at the time, and we listened to it in the car driving up and back to our Berkshire country house, Shaun translating for us from the libretto. Then I bought tickets to Turandot, which was being performed at the New York City Opera, coincidentally on his 10th birthday, July 23, 1991. At first, he was disappointed we were going to an opera on his birthday, but being familiar with the story and music by then, he loved seeing it come alive. I reminded him that the next time he saw Turandot, he would be in it. Shaun seemed to be one of only a few children in the audience that night, and I was proud to see him enjoying opera. My plan seemed to be working.
That fall, Elena placed Shaun in his first opera, Don Giovanni, to give him some onstage experience. Shaun walked a dog, Fancy, across the stage during the village scene. I took pictures of him getting into his elaborate costume, replete with knickers, vest, buckle shoes and a three-cornered hat. I feared Fancy would not be controllable, much like our most disobedient, but adorable Yorkie, Fuzzy, my birthday present to when he was 9. Shaun’s father, Bill, and I sat in the audience, waiting excitedly for his entrance and were moved beyond words to see him on that great stage. As we sat there, we wrote him a note:
Dear Shaun,
We are sitting in the audience now, waiting to see you in your first performance on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. We are so excited! Good luck, honey. But remember, be a doctor! Love, Mommy
P. S. I hope Fancy behaves better than Fuzzy.
His father, an actor, added:
Bah Humbug! Be a ham! Love, Daddy
Shaun later told us he was given a piece of salami to hold so Fancy would stay near him. I imagined that each time Shaun smelled salami, he would think of Don Giovanni.
Elena next tried Shaun in an advanced class. He lasted merely two sessions before being removed. When I asked why, she told me he had neither pitch nor harmony, and he would never be a soloist. I was vastly relieved. “But,” she warned me, “he was a terrific actor.” Danger: The bug could still bite him!
When the new production of L’Elisir d’Amore started, he missed a good deal of school for rehearsals, which for him was one of the perks, next to getting paid ($10 or $20 per rehearsal or performance). I urged him to save for college, to which he reluctantly agreed.
I juggled my patients around so I could pick him up from school, get him to rehearsals, and back to school. Then there were the evening drop-offs and pick-ups for the actual performances. Since we lived nearby, I was sympathetic to other parents having to drive in from Westchester and New Jersey, which somehow they did—happily.
Through the Opera Guild, I obtained tickets for Shaun’s entire fourth-grade class at Rodeph Sholom, including the headmaster, to attend a dress rehearsal of L’Elisir d’Amore, starring Pavarotti and Kathleen Battle. I volunteered to teach the class the story, with tapes sent by the Guild. The music teacher played audiotapes to familiarize the class with the score. Their teacher, sure the class would not be able to sit through both acts, was amazed when the children voted to stay. At the finale, the class cheered and waved at Shaun from the balcony and he waved back. Another glorious day at the opera!
Then there was the time I was seated in the third row of the orchestra. My opera glasses were trained on Shaun for the entire first act, but he was unaware of where I was seated. At intermission, I sent a message backstage to let him know my seating area. During Act II, through the binoculars, I could see his eyes looking for me, then spotting me. From the side of the binoculars I subtly waved my fingers at him, and never losing his concentration, he ever so subtly waved his fingers at me from his lap. I later heard Elena was quite angry when he told her that his mother had waved at him during a performance. Poor Elena and her mothers! But that private mutual acknowledgement is among the more special moments in my life.
That particular production of “L’Elisir,” a new one, was taped and ultimately broadcast on Channel 13. We were unable to calmly watch the tape because all we did was look for Shaun, who appears a good deal. (He is the one who goes under Dulcamara’s tape, tickles him, and gets “spanked” by his stage mother). When the opera was aired, there were telephone calls to and from the grandmas and between friends and relatives. “Did you see him? Did you see him?” All this joy and excitement, yet never wanting him to be a singer or actor. How seductive is the stage!
One Valentine’s Day, I bought us tickets for Zefferelli’s gorgeous production of Turandot. Shaun appeared in his bald cap during Act I, then I quickly brought him to see Act II with me. But when I wanted to stay for Act III, he said, “Ma, I don’t like to go to operas, I just like to be in them!” Yet I had seen his eyes light up whenever he heard a familiar aria. I can’t think of a better way to spend Valentines Day.
Ultimately Shaun was in The Masked Ball, Tosca, The Flying Dutchman, Turandot, and L’Elisir d’Amore. Fortunately, Winnie Klotz, the Met photographer, in photographing the operas, captured Shaun, too, and I had the joy of buying prints of Shaun in the various productions.
In August of 1993, Shaun and I started negotiating his ambivalent return to the chorus. (He preferred an additional day of sports). Since his voice would be changing, I suggested it would be his last year, and that it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. He agreed to return, but only for a month, unless Elena put him in an opera quickly. I hear she had him scheduled for a sword fight. He would have loved that.
At the Dalton School admission interview for seventh grade he told me a boy had been talking about having been to hear Tosca at the Met the previous Saturday. Shaun piped up, “I was in Tosca last Saturday night!” The boy was duly impressed. We knew this was the school for him. He was accepted and was to have started Sept. 8, 1993. On Sept. 6, as we were walking on a country road near our Berkshire home, Shaun was hit by a car and killed. He was 12 years old.
Shaun would not merely want to be remembered for his “operatic career.” He would also want to be known for his prowess in karate, basketball, or swimming, or for his artistic ability, or his extensive comic book collection, or maybe even his academic gifts. I remember him as the best child that ever was.
Elena’s sympathy card touched me deeply:
“You must know that I share your anguished sorrow over the tragic loss of your precious son and my beautiful pupil. In a very special way, Shaun was mine, too, for almost three years, and I will truly miss him. I will never again choose children for ‘Elisir’ without remembering Shaun running to ‘play’ under Dulcamara’s cloak. He was a natural, as we say in the business, and the Met is richer for having counted him a member of the company.”
Perhaps some day I will be able to listen to opera again without my heart breaking.
May, 2003
Epilogue: One recent rainy day, I had a chance meeting in a local bank with a handsome, friendly, young man, who teased me about my wet and bedraggled Yorkshire Terrier.
“She’s been around the block, hasn’t she?” he said.
Smilingly insulted, I defended my precious 12-year-old dog, Fuzzy. In return he showed me a Palm Pilot photo of his Yorkie, preceded by a photo of his son. We exchanged names, and I asked what he did. He said he sang at the Met, and my heart lurched. I told him he would be sad, but I wanted to tell him something. I then said my late son had sung in the Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus.
Questions gently tumbled out, and then he sympathetically asked if he could give me a kiss. I said “Yes,” he kissed my cheek, and we
parted, a poignant and quintessentially New York encounter. Walking home, however, I remembered the article I had written almost 10 years previously, in memory of my darling son, and kept wanting to share it with Richard. To be sure he would receive my mail, and not knowing if he was exaggerating his connection to the Met, I called to ask if they knew of him. They did, and said he was a “rising star.”
I sent the article. Richard Bernstein then called. He said I must come back to the opera, which I had slowly, slowly started to do. Coincidentally, as I discovered, I had already heard him sing in A View from the Bridge.
Several weeks later, the chain on my heart necklace, which has Shaun’s face etched on it, broke, and I went to have it repaired at my local jeweler. The salesperson was bantering with a woman trying on a huge diamond necklace, for a performance photo shoot. When I joined the banter, she told me she sang with the Metropolitan Opera, and was performing in Central Park the following evening. Once again, I shared Shaun with her, got a giant hug, and an invitation to, of all operas, Turandot! It was Andrea Gruber, singing the part of Turandot herself!
Not wanting to be beheaded for disobeying the principessa, I screwed up my emotional courage and went. It was a perfect evening; Andrea was glorious, as was the cast, the chorus, the orchestra, and the New York skyline. In the 10 years since Shaun was killed, I had not met one person from the Met—and just recently, I met two. If I believed in spirits, which I do not, I might think that for our 10-year-anniversary-apart, Shaun, through Fuzzy and my new friendships, was sending opera back to me.
