Pegatha

Tonight I saw Verdi for the first time: Macbeth. Gorgeous.

Not my first time at the opera, though. Sitting in the upper balcony of the Bolshoi, I reminisced about my first time. I was 12, I was special. Pegatha made it so.

Peggy Keller was my music teacher at Our Lady of Ransom Catholic School. Staffed by the Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Felix, OLR was a "powder-blue collar" (as I like to term it) school where shoolsisters and lay women taught us our ABCs. Miss Peggy (or "Pegatha" or "Piggy") Keller was the music teacher.

We were not nouveaux riche -- we were a step above the working class. Barely. My parents chose it because it had the most nuns, per capita, of all the Catholic schools in our area (St. Paul of the Cross; Mary, Seat of Wisdom; St. John Brebeuf; St. Isaac Jogues).

Migdalia Sanchez's father was a mail carrier. Mark Mocarski's parents were immigrants from Poland. There were many first generation kids in my class -- primarily from the Philippines and Poland -- and no one was "wealthy." Sorta'. At best, we were "upper middle class."

We didn't go to the opera for fun.

But I went to the opera at age 12 because I was "special." You see, in 7th grade you got to take a 1/2 day off of school and go to the Lyric Opera. It was a big deal. In 8th Grade you were Confirmed by the bishop; and, you graduated. In 7th ... eh. You got a special field trip. It was culture; it was a "day off;" it was one of the milestones by which we grade schoolers marked our existence.

BUT, I was a 6th grader. A select few -- OK, 2 -- 6th graders were taken with the 7th graders to see "Carmen" at The Lyric (picture it, Chicago, 1990 ...).

I slept. Not through the whole thing, but I slept. We, being a suburban Catholic school, were relegated to the upper upper balcony of the Civic Opera House. It was hot, it was dark, there was a pleasant hum of strings. Everyone, at one time or another (Ms. Keller included), dozed.

But then we awoke. The green, aged copper gate closing; Carmen's "Toreador," death. You did not sleep through those parts. You were a kid watching lust and violence at your OWN school kid's matinee!

Peggy Keller made sure I was there.

She liked me. I was attentive, musically inclined, and I love art. Ms. Keller liked me, so she gave me the chance to watch Bizet's masterpiece. It wasn't a great production, but it changed my life.

It did.

Sitting in the bronze jewel box that is the Civic (now Lyric) Opera House of Chicago, you are dazzled. Guerin's curtain, the enormous lobby, the gilt and ghoulish drama/tragedy masks that adorn the theatre... you are in a palace of the arts. It hits you like a brick. I sat there, at age 12, wowed.

Age 13 wasn't great -- a terrible production of L'elisir d'amore; or: SNORE! THE OPERA.

At any rate, at age 12 Ms. Keller invited me to be a big kid. She trusted me to comprehend, in part, the beauty being offered to me. I did, and I was grateful.

Ms. Keller died a couple of years ago. Cancer. Tonight, as I sat watching my first Verdi -- my first amongst many MANY operas since those two at the Lyric -- I thought about how lucky I was. I was a kid at a, now closed, "powder-blue collar" school and was given the chance to escape the trappings of suburbia. I took it, and ran with it - and tried to give back in whatever ways I could (when I got to high school, and had a bit of influence in the performing arts department, I made sure my alma mater - Our Lady of Ransom - was on the list of grade schools invited to the student matinees). It was never much, but it was what I could do. I knew my roots, and appreciate them.

Sitting in the Bolshoi tonight was memorable - in both the past and present tense.