My friend Karla is from Holland, land of liquorice. Black liquorice. If you consider red vines to be liquorice you can stop reading right now even though this post isn’t about liquorice at all.

Karla told me they have a saying in Holland “liquorice poisoning.” That’s when you spend all evening (or days) with your hand going back and forth from the candy bowl. It’s akin to Death by Chocolate.  Then she went and introduced me to Salmiak Rocks, a slightly salty/sweet Dutch liquorice. I currently have liquorice poisoning but that’s only by the by.

I also have Verdi Poisoning. Verdi’s Il Trovatore has just finished up a run at Seattle Opera. While I gather it is one his most loved operas, I don’t remember ever seeing it and I wasn’t familiar with many of the well beloved and famous songs. At Seattle Opera I saw it twice. In between I ordered the score. While I was waiting for the score, I sat at the piano and sang every aria from Il Trovatore I could find in the house. I found myself saying “Strrrrrride la VAMPa” for no apparent reason other than that I live alone and talk to myself a lot.

It began with my neighbor across the street, Bill, asking me if I wanted to go to the dress rehearsal of Il Trovatore. His parents are huge opera goers; part of their subscription includes dress rehearsal seats, which Bill and his sister usually avail themselves of. Bill’s sister being otherwise engaged, he asked me.

I had never been to a dress. We had excellent seats smack in the center of the first tier. But I was otherwise not impressed. The singers were marking, not really giving it their all, which we had been warned about but I didn’t expect this to detract from my enjoyment. It did.

I was disappointed in the soprano (Leonora) anyway. I require an exceptional soprano. This one had one of those voices whose beauty had been trained out of her. And the mezzo (Azucena) wobbled. To my ears she needed more frontal focus to disperse some of that breath that was hanging around in her throat. Ironically, the only voice I really loved was that of the tenor who sang Manrico and he had a cold.

In Il Trovatore, most of the action has already taken place and is relayed in the arias and choruses. It’s a grotesque and repulsive story that involves a baby being thrown into a fire. In this production we learn this not just through the music and super-titles but with the help of a shadow play behind a curtain. When you’re sitting in the center of the house, it’s right in your face: a woman tied to a stake, struggling to free herself from the fire and the mezzo tosses in (what she think is) her baby. It was horrifying. I couldn’t stop commenting on it on the way home. Bill kept saying, “All operas have horrible plots.” I kept saying, “But it was a baby.”

Though it had been a sleepy performance (except for the baby), I could not get the music out of my head. That was when I started looking through my books and CDs to find arias to play. I scrolled YouTube. I stalked Il Trovatore.

Then I walked around Green Lake with my friend Nancy who had just seen the production with The Other Cast. She and Scott had loved it so much they were talking about going to see it again. The music was already zinging in my head. They had seen and heard something apparently stunning. I wanted to hear the other cast.

We found a time we could all go together. Nancy and Scott went SRO and I went with that golden ticket, the Senior Rush. You show up before curtain and present your rush ticket, whereupon they find you a spare seat and no matter where it is in the house, it costs $45.

I almost always manage to get in a box. A Box! At Aida, I had Box #1, practically hanging out over the stage. I could have thrown up from excitement, right onto the first violins. I sat next to the guy who had turned the ticket in and who obviously was unhappy his chosen partner wasn’t there with him. I told him how delighted I was to have the seat because I was a singing teacher and those of us who actually teach singing can’t always afford to hear singing.

“You teach?” he perked up. “Where?”

“Oh I have a private studio.”

“Oh.” He turned away in disappointment. Not only was his chosen partner not there, the singing teacher he had to sit next to wasn’t even a professor at Julliard.

At this performance of Il Trovatore, I again got a great box seat and a congenial seatmate as well. The guy on my other side was a jaw-clicker but he smelled good and my pleasure was not impinged upon.

I was forward in my seat most of the evening. I will confess that much as I adore opera (and Shakespeare,) I do tend to take a little snooze at some point. On this particular evening I didn’t. The soprano was everything I could have hoped for. I could have died and floated away on her voice on “Tacea la notte placida.”  It was the same wonderful tenor, now a week past his cold! The mezzo had a nice frontal edge and a range and flexibility that was electrifying.

I looked down at my lap when the baby was thrown into the fire.

It was a transcendent experience. Nancy and I compared notes all the next week.

“That fast one that comes after the slow one, what is it? It runs through my head all the time.” (We determined it was “Di tale amor”—it comes after “Tacea la notte placida.”

“I am listening to Joan Sutherland sing it right now.”

“I’ve found “Il Balen” in my arias for baritones and was just playing it.”

“I found Leotyne Price singing “D’amor sull’ali rosee.” I’m getting that CD.” 

“Stride la vampa.”

“Ah, ‘Stride la vampa!’”

“Do you think you might want to see it again.”

“Maybe. Would you go?”

We didn’t, but we both thought about it: that’s Verdi Poisoning.