This morning's performance was reserved for the students at John Hay High School. And I mean the entire school. Several hundred teenagers filled the auditorium, talking, laughing, texting, playing with their iPods, etc. I could tell they were happy to get out of class for an hour. But I couldn't help wondering if their teachers had given them any of the background context for the opera. Would they get it? Would it engage them and draw them in? Would they even like it?
The cast and most of the orchestra pre-set ourselves at the back of the auditorium before the concert began. The idea was that we would process up to the stage after the first piece, seamlessly and without the distraction of the doors in the back letting in light from outside. The concert started with Max Bruch's Kol Nidre for cello and piano, played beautifully. Unfortunately for those of us in the back, there was a constant stream of kids entering and exiting the back of the auditorium as the security guard cluelessly let them in during the piece, light flooding in, letting the doors slam as they closed. Kids being kids, there was a lot of whispering, giggling, and shushing from the peanut gallery. There were slides projected onto a large screen during the performance, but apparently that wasn't enough to focus them. They clapped when they thought the piece was over, about a minute too soon. I know that most of them have rarely or never attended a classical concert, so they don't know the protocol as well as they might.
The sound of a train whistle filled the room. Huge, menacing-looking images of a black steam engine filled the screen. Spotlights illuminated the aisles. I got to lead a line. We were to walk--slowly--while a very few musicians played the 90-second overture. It's hard to walk slowly but fast enough so that everyone behind you can get to their place on stage before the overture is over.
Maybe it's because I was on stage, behind all of the other musicians, but I didn't hear any noise from the audience except when they laughed or clapped at the action on stage. At the very, very end, something special happened. Ela Weissburger, who played the Cat in all 55 of the original performances in Thereisenstadt, came up to the stage and talked to the kids for about 15 minutes about how this music helped her survive the horrors of living in a concentration camp. It gave everyone involved an escape from the cold, the hunger, the terror of being sent away to a place no one ever came back from. It gave them hope, a feeling of connectedness, and a hold on their sanity.
She is in her early 80s. Her voice isn't the loudest and she didn't have a microphone. But that room was absolutely silent. They got it.
