# Humorist Lewis Grizzard On Opera



## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

I've been reading a terrifically funny book of humorous essays by the late Lewis Grizzard , a Georgia native and witty good old boy.
(1946- 1994). The one about his visit to the Atlanta opera for a performance of La Boheme is priceless . Here it is : MY Night At The Opera

A number of my uncultured friends have been giving me the business about attending the opera recently , the same evening of a Braves-Giants baseball game the sportswriters
called the most important regular-season Atlanta game since the beginning of time.
Naturally, I have not allowed the criticism to bother me. I would not have thought of 
missing the Atlanta opera company's La Boheme for something as pedestrian as a 
baseball game .
Besides, I couldn't get tickets to the ball game . A couple of forty-eight dollar 
back-row seats for La Boheme were a cinch ."The game was on TV ", said my
friends , who think opera is for people who call spaghetti pasta .
I even had to drag my lovely fiancee Dedra , to the performance . She wanted to
stay at home and read the latest John Grisham novel "The Bill".
"You'll love the opera ", I said . "La Boheme is very romantic." "That's what you said
about the Citrus Bowl ",she argued.
Some people, like me, are born to culture . Others have it thrust upon them .
That's what Richard Gere said to Julia Roberts , by the way , when he took her to
see the opera in Pretty Woman , where she wet her britches . I mean, she liked it
better than Rags To Riches ( A TV comedy/drama series from the 80s).
La Boheme is about a sick girl who dies . She coughs a lot in the first three acts and
then dies in the fourth . The thing about opera , however , is that a cough can last fifteen minutes . This wasn't my first opera . I attended the opera once in Vienna .
That opera was abut everybody wanting to go to bed with the plump chambermaid .
There were differences between the Atlanta opera and the Vienna opera .
IN Vienna , the hall wasn't air-conditioned . The plump chambermaid looked like 
she'd been through two IRS tax audits by the end of the performance .
It was quite comfortable , however , in Atlanta's symphony hall . Pu ton an opera 
in early September in a building that isn't air-conditioned and the joint would smell
like Ross Grant's socks after a doubleheader .
What else was different there was there was a screen above the stage in Atlanta 
that offered English subtitles . That's how I learned an operatic cough could last
fifteen minutes .
A man sang and sang tot he sick girl . The screen flashed what he said in
English , which came out ,"You okay ?" She replied for fifteen minutes , hitting notes
that could have thrown Delta flights landing at Hartsfield off course . and,
at the end , the screen flashed "Haaaaaack !" 
To be perfectly honest about it , I was a bit embarrassed for my home town .
I thought showing English subtitles at the opera was saying to us " We know 
you rubes have no idea what's going on here , so we'll make it easy for you. " 
I, of course , didn't need them . In The Godfather , for instance , somebody
rambled on for fifteen minutes in Italian , and I knew what he said was 
" Cut off the horse's head and put it in the creep's bed ."
Something else embarrassed me , too. There were many Atlanta opera-goers 
who sat there with plugs in their ears listening to radios .
Just before the sick girl died , a lot of them cheered . "They shouldn't cheer
anybody dying ," said Dedra . "They're not", I said , " I think the Braves just
scored ". 
Imagine people sitting at an opera listening to a baseball game .
Especially when they paid forty-eight dollars to see what amounted to a Vicks commercial .








:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:


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