# An inadvertent funny opera review, a funny backstage story...



## katdad (Jan 1, 2009)

I shared some funny stories of my experiences in a small but authentic opera company, singing with them 4+ years, mostly chorus with some roles, comprimario and such. Listening to a CD of Manon last week I was reminded of another funny story...

We were doing Manon, which is a fairly large cast and "fancy" opera for a small company, but the opera went off very well, no disasters, no real problems.

Now as you understand, for reasons that are principally economic, there aren't many black opera singers. This isn't the topic however, just a statement of fact.

In our production, we had a few black singers who'd come and go in our roles, hired for the part, and one year we had a black mezzo in our chorus. Well, here's this fairly large cast in Manon and just by chance, we had only one black singer, a really fun guy, baritone from LA, I forget his name and I'm too lazy to check my opera notes, so let's call him Bill Jones. He was singing the role of Lescaut (Manon's cousin).

Well, we had a successful premiere and we got reviewed by the newspaper. The particular arts and music reviewer who wrote the Manon review was one of those writers who feel they need to use lots of unique adjectives and adverbs to their review, showing off that they've got a thesaurus I suppose.

The review was quite favorable, the reviewer speaking well of each principal singer, and when it came to Bill Jones who sang Lescaut, he said "... Mr. Jones lends a certain color to his role..."

Now there are maybe 200 adjectives that could have been used, but to use the word "color" while discussing the only black singer in the cast?

So we all began to appear the next afternoon for a quick rehearsal to iron out some rough spots prior to our 2nd performance, and in the dressing room, as is usual, someone had posted the review.

We were sitting around, looking through our music, getting ready to put on costumes and makeup, when someone said, "Hey, Bill, did you see the review? It says that you lend color to the role."

Naturally Bill had already seen the review, but he pretended ignorance, went to the bulletin board and read out loud... "... lends COLOR to his role..." and then he stood in the center of the dressing room and looked at his own arm, pinched his skin, examined it carefully, and spoke loudly and excitedly (in this awful, stereotyped US southern black patois), "Look! Ah IS got got color! The man be right! Ah IS lendin' color to my role!"

Then Bill ran around the room to all of us, displaying his arm, "Look! Look at me! Ah IS lending color!"

And naturally we all collapsed in laughter.


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