The biggest surprise in last Thursday’s performance of Bel Canto at Chicago’s Lyric Opera came in the second act. and it didn’t happen on stage.

I wrote a post last week about preparing to see (okay, hear) my first live opera.

• I reread the book Bel Canto.
• I heard the book’s author Ann Patchett talk with Renee Fleming at a Lyric Unlimited presentation about transforming a novel into an opera.
• I attended a panel discussion by the Bel Canto composer, librettist, director and conductor about the work involved in developing a new opera.
• I used my talking computer to study the word version of the playbill (thank you, Lyric Opera of Chicago, for emailing that to me ahead of time).
• I convinced a friend to accompany me to the opera Bel Canto Thursday.

A scene from Bel Canto.

As far as that last bullet point goes, I must say, it hardly took convincing. My friend Jenny Foucré Fischer is a musician herself (flute) and met her husband Dean (French horn) when we were all in the York Community High School band together. Dean and Jenny Fischer raised three talented children. All three play musical instruments. Jenny attended operas with them when they were growing up, and, like me, she loved the book Bel Canto. Jenny has worked at The Bookstore in Glen Ellyn for 17 years and is, by definition, a book nerd. Want proof? When I told Jenny that Mike and I often listen to an audio book in bed together to help us fall asleep, she responded, “That’s my idea of foreplay!”

Neither Jenny nor I wore ballgowns to the opera house, but we did dress up some –- she wore a glittery sweater, and I went for the tuxedo look: black wool slacks with a long white button-down classic shirt. We arrived early for yet another preview discussion, this one about the score.

Composer Jimmy Lopez is originally from Peru, where the opera is set, and the presenter we heard before the opera gave us specific scenes (“he’d say stuff like “In Act One, Scene Two” for example) where Lopez has a huge conch shell in his instrumentation. “It will sound like a horn, but a horn you may never have heard before.” He told us which scene would feature cellists plunking strings rather than using their bows, and how the composer brought whistles from Peru to depict the sounds of birds in one scene. The ability to read the playbill ahead of time was extremely helpful. I could imagine where the bird sounds might be used and looked forward to hearing them.

He acknowledged that many in the audience were probably here because we liked the book Bel Canto so much. “Raise your hand if this is your first time at an opera.” My hand shot up, and I sensed Jenny turning around to count how many hands were up behind us.  About a third of the audience was in my boat.

When the presenter advised us not to compare the book with the opera, I recalled Ann Patchett saying in conversation with Renee Fleming weeks earlier that she was perfectly happy to hand her novel over to Lyric and allow the creative team to do anything they wanted with it. “I’ve read the libretto,” she said. “And, really, it’s better than the book.”

The presenter at the opera said he was confident we’d go home later tonight loving both, and then, presentation over, Jenny led me out to the lobby and treated us each to a glass of wine before the show. I went on so much about the opera that I didn’t have time to finish my wine. Tant pis.

We were settled in our seats when Lyric’s Facility Operations Manager Nora O’Malley tapped me on the shoulder. “You want a headset?” We were there the night of Lyric’s accessible performance. Nora explained that a sighted narrator was in the balcony to translate subtitles and describe visual effects into an earphone I could wear. The earpiece would just be in one ear so I could listen to the music with the other.

I’ve tried these headsets at plays, and sometimes the person talking in my ear distracts too much from what’s going on onstage. But this was different. The panel discussion I’d been to a week earlier clued me in that Bel Canto would be sung in nine, count them, nine, different languages. I nodded yes.

The small rectangular receiver Nora placed in my palm felt familiar. I immediately knew how to work the dial. “It’s a Steppenwolf device,” she said. Sure enough, I’d used this same device at Steppenwolf Theatre a year or so earlier, and then again last month at a Straw Dog Theatre production featuring puppetry. When the Straw Dog staff offered me a headset, they, too, described it as a “Steppenwolf device.” It’s not a brand name. It’s a nod to Steppenwolf Theatre for spearheading efforts to make Chicago cultural events more accessible. Steppenwolf is generous with their accessible equipment — they loan it out to a lot of Chicago organizations offering audio description.

But on with the opera. The presenter of the preview talk that night mentioned that the opera would begin with the chorus singing about how delighted they were to be in Peru. “Listen for hints of that same melody at the end of the opera,” he said. I kept my headset off for the opening. I didn’t need to know the words, I already knew they were happy to be in Peru. I just wanted to take in the music and keep my ears open for the conch.

Throughout the first act I’d put the earphone in my left ear, dial up the volume for short bits of dialoguelibretta and turn the volume off and take the earphone off for the more orchestral bits. At times the music was so discordant it made me feel anxious, but over and over again, just when I was feeling uncomfortable, one of the stars would burst into a gorgeous aria (I think that’s what they’re called) to release the tension. And wasn’t that the point of the story? Music easing the tension between people with different political views and languages?

During intermission Jenny had questions about what the man in my ear had been saying throughout the first act. Does he describe the look on their faces? Their movements? The props? Nora the facility operations manager walked up just as I was offering my Steppenwolf device to Jenny to sample. Nora said they had a few extras. “You want one of your own to try?” Jenny said yes, Nora darted away and returned with a second headset.

I showed Jenny how to use the dial, she plugged in, I plugged in and the second act began. I did my usual headset on, headset off, and assumed Jenny had taken hers off completely after the first couple minutes. When Nora returned to collect the headsets after the standing ovation, Jenny told us she’d kept the headset on for the entire second act. “It was awesome!” she gushed. The subtitles projected on stage had distracted Jenny from the action during the first act. “With that guy translating I could pay more attention to what was going on up there on stage,” she said. “During the second act, sometimes I just closed my eyes and listened.”

That’s Regan, today’s guest blogger, peaking out of her hood at a Chicago bus stop.

It was a lucky day for me when Regan Burke turned up for one of my memoir-writing classes. A civil rights activist, Regan was a White House staffer during the Clinton presidency and has colorful – and moving – stories to tell. She files away unusual words she hears and cleverly shoehorns one or two of them into each essay – you’ll find one here in her guest post about the value of honesty in memoir-writing.

There’s a Lacuna in My Story

by Regan Burke

Sometimes I email the essays I write for my memoir classes to a good friend.

She tends to find my work imprudent and irresponsible.

”You read that aloud in class?” she’ll ask. “Yep,” I answer. “I did.”

I have a strong motivation for writing the truth. A book by Dr. Howard Schubiner called Unlearn Your Pain caught my eye a few years ago. Dr. Schubiner treats chronic pain psychologically through fearless writing, and after completing his prescribed writing exercises, I joined a memoir-writing class.

I knew assignments and deadlines would encourage me to delve further into the unfinished emotions that may be the genesis of my pain. After six months of writing, pain from my severe spinal canal stenosis disappeared completely.

That’s not the end of the story, though. I still have arthritis and fibromyalgia pain that can be mollified by narcotics or surgery. Instead, I choose bibliotherapy. Writing is my journey to a higher quality of life.

In conversations with other memoir-writers I find some of us worry we’ll run out of new stories to write. The weekly assignments help, and often the prompt brings some emotionally painful incident from my past to light. I don’t always want to write about these first thoughts – consequences of my alcoholism and drug addiction, mean sisters, non-parenting mother and father and my own non-parenting. However, since I have proof that bibliotherapy works, it is essential to force myself to sit with my MacBook and coffee plunking out stories.

Some of my writing classmates have asked me how I can be so honest in front of our groups. Writers in class were once anonymous faces, but as happens in the passage of familiar time, we are now interesting companions curious to hear each others’ next 500-word installment. I have trusted them.

Don’t get me wrong. If all my short memoirs were put in chronological order, a reader of the work might wonder if something was missing. “There’s a lacuna in your story,” I can hear my friend say over coffee. “What about THE MEN?”

No matter how many weekly 500-word memoirs I turn out, there will always be holes, i.e. THE MEN. I will never be honest about the men in my life, even the dead ones. This may prolong or even deepen pain in my knee joints but there you have it. No men stories.

I considered starting my own 12-step-type memoir-writing group where we adhere to honesty and confidentiality. But if I’m not writing about THE MEN in one group, I’m not going to in another. I don’t trust my own resilience to withstand the anticipated embarrassment, shame or judgments.

The class Beth teaches is on break now but my other memoir-writing class led by Linda Miller at the Center for Life and Learning continues. Our assignment this week is to write a “big story.” Obviously my only “big story” is THE MEN. The hole goes unfilled. And as I write this, I drink coffee and ice my knees.

My first opera experience last night was a huge success, and while I work on paring that grand experience down into a piece short enough to publish here, as long as we’re on an orchestral bent, how about I share some thoughts about Steve Inskeep’s interview of Itzhak Perlman on NPR’s Morning Edition a couple weeks ago.I’ve heard Itzhak Perlman perform on the radio and on television, but without being able to see the renowned violinist on stage, I had no idea he had a disability until I heard that radio interview and learned that Perlman contracted polio when he was 4 years old. He’s used crutches ever since, and when he was asked about his disability during the NPR interview, he said it has nothing to do with his performance. “I can’t walk very well, but I’m not onstage to do walking,” he told NPR’s Steve Inskeep. “I’m on the stage to play.”

I thought it was a great answer. Steve Inskeep, however, kept pushing with follow-up questions: Does it make any difference to you that you sit rather than stand during solos? Did polio limit your options, and that’s why you gravitated to playing the violin? So you’re telling me that people expected no less of you because you couldn’t walk?

I know that those of us who have disabilities are in the minority, and its human nature to be curious about how and why we do the things we do. But isn’t one or two questions enough? Before asking one of his many, many disability-related questions during the interview, Inskeep acknowledged that the particular one he was about to ask would be “surely an unanswerable question” and then went on to ask it anyway. “Would you have been the same musician that you are had you not been stricken with polio at a very young age?” Perlman’s answer to the surely unanswerable question was just another example of what a gracious and self-aware man he is:

“I think yes. You know, a lot of people like to think that polio was an inspiration in what I do. I think that music has to do with what kind of passion do you have. If I was destined to be a musician, it would have happened.”

So hmm. Maybe the reason I didn’t know that Itzhak Perlman had a disability has nothing to do with the fact that I can’t see him. It’s just that his disability is not the most important – or most interesting — thing about him.

The opera Bel Canto (based on Ann Patchett’s novel by the same name) had its world Premiere at Chicago’s Lyric Opera Monday night, and I’m going to tomorrow night’s performance. It will be the first time ever that I’ve attended an opera.

When I was a kid, the only opera I knew was the Merrie Melodies cartoon one. you know, the one where Strauss music follows Viking Elmer Fudd as he bellows “Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit!” and chases Bugs Bunny? It still makes me smile, just thinking about it.

I ditched a day of high school for the movie premiere of The Who’s Tommy, and I played the double-album to Jesus Christ Superstar at high volume in my basement bedroom, but I never did see a rock opera live on stage. Opera was not on my radar in college, and after I lost my sight I figured that with all the over-the-top costumes and staging and lyrics in foreign languages, opera would be forever off my list. But then came a sequence of events more outlandish than most opera plots:

1. Ann Patchett, one of my favorite authors and a woman who didn’t know a thing about opera before, came out with a bestseller with a world-renowned soprano as the main character.
2. Mike and I moved to Chicago.
3. Real-life renowned soprano Renee Fleming signed on as the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s creative consultant.
4. Ms. Fleming saw to it that the Lyric obtain rights to the novel Bel Canto.
5. And now, tomorrow night, this blind woman will debut in the Lyric’s audience.

I’ve been preparing for my debut ever since I heard that the opera Bel Canto would be opening here this year. I started by rereading the book, then I went to the Harold Washington Library Center in Chicago with friends a few weeks ago to hear Ann Patchett and Renee Fleming talk about the making of the opera, and then last week I went to the Lyric with a friend to hear the men behind-the-scenes give a panel about all the work involved in developing a new opera for the stage. Thanks to them, I now know what a “librettist” does.

Still, I wasn’t sure I’d attend the opera. Tickets can be pricey, and not only would I miss out on the costumes and the staging, but without being able to read the subtitles (this opera is sung in nine, count them, nine different languages) I wouldn’t understand most of the dialogue. I’m pretty game for trying new things. Experience has shown me, however, that at times overreaching can leave me feeling worse about my blindness than staying home. Maybe going to an opera would be an overreach.

Eyebrows up! My positive experiences with other Chicago cultural institutions in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act this year spurred me on. I wrote Nora O’Malley, Facility Operations Manager for the Lyric Opera of Chicago with my questions about accessibility — namely, the subtitles. “I am guessing it is unconventional to ask for the libretto of a brand new opera ahead of time,” I wrote. “But if I promised not to share it with anyone else, might you find a way to email it to me before the opera? That way I could use my talking computer to read it before I come…”

Nora wrote back write away. Turns out she remembered me from a talk I’d given in September at Greater Together, a cultural accessibility summit here in Chicago. “A Word version of the program is attached,” she wrote. “We’ll also have Braille programs available if you’re interested.” She asked where I’d be sitting and said they’d find a way to accommodate my Seeing Eye dog Whitney if I bring her. “If you do plan on bringing her, you can notify me via email, call me or simply ask for the House Manager when you arrive and we’ll make it work.” The program she attached outlines the plot, and before I head to the Civic Opera House I’ll read through it to see how the libretto (did I mention I know what that word means now?) might differ from the original book version

As for the subtitles, turns out I may be able to hear them at tomorrow night’s performance. “Lastly, the December 10th performance of Bel Canto is our Audio Described performance,” Nora wrote. “Would you be interested in listening in?” I am! I will! Time to dig out my ball gown and opera-length gloves – I’m off to the opera.

As Beth wrote in her Sunday post, we spent a wonderful weekend with our friend Lydia, who moved to Cambridge to take a job with Harvard Magazine. Lydia’s a gifted writer and a solid reporter to boot—she just won an award for this article on the human biome that she wrote for the University of Chicago magazine, her previous employer. She’s still doing long-form stuff, but at her new gig at Harvard she also gets to write about Harvard’s highly ranked women’s hockey team. Lydia’s a hockey player herself, and teaches little kids to skate, so it’s a labor of love and nice change of pace for her.

An aerial view of Harvard Square.

Beth and I stayed in Cambridge, right on Harvard Square. I’ve been to Boston proper several times, but this was the first time I’d stepped foot in Cambridge. It was in many ways exactly what I expected. Harvard Yard, small by Big Ten standards, was just as Ivyish as I’d imagined. And there were the nearby neighborhoods, with big old houses and tree-lined streets and red-brick sidewalks that were buckled by tree roots. (Let the record show, however: It’s no Madison. I’m a University of Illinois graduate, and nothing beats our Quadrangle. But Madison, Wisconsin, is in a league of its own as far as college towns go.)

In other ways, I was a little surprised. Cambridge is more urban than I’d guessed, and there’s a lot of traffic and bustle mixed in with all the ivy quaintness. And I was a little surprised that it seemed like, well, lots of other college and university towns. Not sure what I expected—that Harvard students would look different? Well, they don’t. I mean, there’s clearly a lot of money in that town—you can sense it the same way you do in say, D.C. But overall, and I’m kind of happy to say this, it seemed like just a nice college town.

All in all, it was a splendid visit. Our friend is getting along well. But she made clear she misses Chicago, dearly. She’s actually from the South (and no Chicagoans, I don’t mean Kankakee), but between journalism school at Northwestern, community newspapering in the South Loop and her time at the University of Chicago, the city seems to have gotten into her blood.

When I first moved here, I wasn’t sure I could stand the sirens and the screeching of the L and all the construction noise. And it never gets really dark because of all the light pollution. Wide open spaces are hard to come by. Randy Newman’s got a song called “I Love L.A.,” in which he extols the virtues of Southern California, and explains why he wouldn’t live in some other places, including Chicago—here’s a line:

“Let’s leave Chicago to the Eskimos, 

that town’s a little too rugged, for you and me babe.”

My first year or two here, I thought maybe it was a little too rugged. Gradually, something has changed. I think it’s perhaps that I’ve embraced the rugged, and rugged is what I love about this place. It is also, at times, what I hate about it. It’s goodness and awfulness seem to both be bald-faced. Phenomenal architecture and the symphony and art—all this tremendous beauty only miles from the Laquan MacDonald shooting. They might as well be separate universes. And citizens seem to be addicted to boss-system politics at the expense of transparent democracy—we must be, we keep voting for the monsters.

But, walking home from the Orange Line L stop on our way home Sunday, we passed the Harold Washington Library. Which reminded me that there are good people chipping away against the awfulness. And sometimes they win out. Like the many quiet heroes who stayed on that MacDonald case and made sure it didn’t go away.

Good striving against evil. Always. Right here in Chicago.