Memory is a highly fallible record of the past. This divergence from fact to fancy increases with age and its attendant distance from the recalled event, as well as the fog and confabulation that the accumulation of years inevitably accrues.
Despite these difficulties, I started recalling all the cities in which I had heard serious music since my first experience with the genre. My definition of serious music is symphonic and orchestral music, chamber music, ballet, and opera. This is a purely personal definition. I fully realize that others consider an extensive list of other musical forms as serious. I do not mean to denigrate any other musical form.
Toward the end of 1952, when I was a high school student, I decided to go to Carnegie Hall and hear a concert. I had no idea about the program. I’m not even sure how I knew that there would be a concert that evening. As things turned out, the New York Philharmonic played a Bruckner symphony. I don’t recall the rest of the performance. I had not heard of Bruckner before the concert, which was, I think, conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos.
I didn’t get to an opera house until the fall of 1954 when I heard La Traviata staged by the New York City Opera. This was when the company performed in a theater on West 55th Street. The soprano was Eva Likova. The rest of the cast is forgotten, at least by me. I sat in the last row of the balcony. It was a moving experience.
My first Met performance was Tosca on December 25, 1954. The cast included Licia Albanese, Eugene Conley (substituting for an indisposed Jan Peerce), George London, and Salvatore Baccaloni. I had a seat in the Grand Tier for that show, but for the next seven years, with one or two exceptions, I was a standee. Standing room at the old Met was $2 a person and limited, I think, to 200 people. For a performance with a great singer(s), you had to get online three to four hours before the show. An orchestra seat was $8. A major ambition of mine at the time was to be able to afford to sit down during an opera.
One of the perks of a career in academic medicine is frequent travel. When I was at a medical meeting, I usually went to whatever show was available. Sometimes, a performance was scheduled by the organizers of the meeting. If I were invited as a visiting professor to a medical school or hospital, I would go to whatever was scheduled at the time, or my host would arrange for me to attend a concert or opera. When on vacation, I usually went to a city that offered performances of serious music.
Below is the list of cities in which I attended at least one performance. The cities in which I attended the most concerts, etc, are New York, Chicago, Santa Fe, and Lubbock. It’s based solely on recollection, as I kept no written record.
As I indicated above, memory is faulty, especially when the span is many decades. But the list is the best I can do. If I’ve imagined or omitted, I’m guilty of error, not deception.
New York City
Cooperstown
Boston
Tanglewood
Chicago
Ravinia (Illinois)
Colorado Springs
Aspen
Columbus
Cleveland
New Orleans
Miami
Fort Lauderdale
Santa Fe
El Paso
Lubbock
Dallas
Fort Worth
Houston
San Antonio
Los Angeles
Post (Texas)
San Francisco
Seattle
Williamstown (Mass)
Toronto
Montreal
Vancouver
Mexico City
Buenos Aires
Manaus (Brazil)
Belfast
Dublin
Budapest
Saint Petersburg
Kraków
Vienna
Berlin
Amsterdam
Paris
London
Venice
Milan
Rome
Bari
Naples
Taormina
Catania
Madrid
Barcelona
Seville
Sydney
Tokyo
Hong Kong
Bangkok
What music you listened before? and or what other music do you enjoy besides “serious music”?
When I was a boy, I greatly enjoyed the popular music of the time. Almost all of it is forgotten today. I liked and still like New Orleans-style jazz. Anything performed by Louis Armstrong is very appealing. But I mostly stick to the music described in the article.
It sounds like you’ve heard performances in a lot of cities in Italy. Are there things special to, say, Sicily that you haven’t heard elsewhere? (I’m a big fan of Italian opera, but have never been to Italy, alas.)
Opera in Sicily is similar to the rest of Italy. One outdoor performance at the Giardino Bellini by the Catania company comes to mind. Turandot was the opera. The two sopranos, whose names I have forgotten, were not very good. The tenor was Giuseppe Giacomini. He was great! After ‘Nessun dorma’, the locals in the wooden bleachers went mad.They wanted an encore. The stamped their feet so violently that I thought the structure would collapse. It didn’t, and they didn’t get what they demanded, though Giacomini was obviously willing to provide it.
You’ve reminded me of my first forays into theater and opera. It began in high school in the early 1960s and I lived in New York City. NYC felt like the absolute best place to live in the world. Every summer I experienced 2-3 Shakespeare plays in Central Park – FREE. There were standing room only tickets for about $1 to see opera at the Metropolitan Opera and the NY City Opera pre Lincoln Center theaters. Gorgeous ballet at the NYC Ballet and other companies. The cultural experiences that I could have for little or no money was incomparable.