“Ah,” I thought to myself, sitting comfortably in my assigned seat at Le Carré in Amsterdam.  It was a very nice seat at the back of the royal “loge” section in what used to be the circus theatre. The theater is no longer the home of the circus. 

*

A few years ago I heard Mavis Staples at Le Carré and that was an exceptional experience. I signed up for a “We Are Public” seat (a subscription service to supplement an audience when sales are poor or the venue too big and Le Carré is huge) only to be told when I showed up to collect the ticket, that all the “plonk butts in seats”  tickets were taken. Quite a few disappointed and audibly irate “We Are Public” pass holders were standing around the lobby, determined to hear Mavis sing. 

I wasn’t hell bent on seeing the show but something told me to stick around. And so eventually it was just me and the doorman standing at either side of the entrance. Both bells had rung and everyone with a bonafide ticket had taken their seat. The doorman was eyeing me with distrust. I was watching a figure coming down the street, running awkwardly with a folded up bicycle under one arm and a supermarket bag hanging from the other arm.

*

The woman stopped in front of the entrance of Le Carre. “Do you,” she panted, addressing the only person in front of her not wearing a red doorman’s coat, “need a ticket?”

And that is how I got to see and hear Mavis Staples live. 

*

But that was years ago, and this time I had been cheerfully handed my “settle your backside” in a red plush seat ticket by a cordial young man at the ticket desk and I was ready to witness the opera Ariadne auf Naxos (opera is decidedly not a popular genre among the We Are Public pass holders). I found myself sitting front and center of the stage and I was thinking (because I hadn’t really thought about what I had signed up for) that Ariadne auf Naxos was the opera in which the character of Zerbinetta shows up. I was quite startled by this thought. I believe that four years ago I would not have been surprised but since I stopped singing, I rarely think about these things. 

*

Years ago, what like thirty odd years ago, I sang Zerbinetta’s aria in an audition. Maybe more than one audition. I never sang the role of Zerbinetta on stage. It was one of those, “Oh yeah, Persephone, you should study this aria. It’s you.” And so I studied it and it’s around fifteen minutes long and it’s a beast of an aria because of the vocal range and, by the way, it’s composed by Richard Strauss. Did I still know it? Yes, I did. Once the soprano (dressed up in a bird of paradise burlesque costume) shimmied her way onto the stage, I heard every phrase coming forward from the recesses of my brain. 

The soprano sang it excellently with humor and tenderness. I could have never sung it that well. My German was never quite up to par and then, to be honest, I didn’t understand the sentiment Zerbinetta expresses in the aria. 

*

“Oh yeah, you need to sing this, Persephone. It’s you.” Correction, I had no notion, because of a lack of interest and experience of the aria’s content, of what the aria was specifically meant to express. However, I did my best to interpret the theme of “every man serves up a heartache and every man is an opportunity to fall in love so let’s enjoy a rota of suitors” and act my ass off as if I could emotionally relate to Zerbinetta. I was playing a role within a role. I was enacting the part of a neurotypical person playing the role of Zerbinetta. Deep down I was terrified and following my teachers’ orders by behaving as if the sentiment was a sort of farce. Actually the whole scene is a farce but the underlying sentiment is human.

“I think,” I thought while watching the last act of Ariadne auf Naxos, “that I related to the theme of implausibility in operas. That’s the part that felt natural.”