At last! On my list for years. One of the current truly greats I wanted to see live, and now was my chance.

Over the years I’ve had almost my share – saw Schwarzkopf as the Marschallin as her voice soared over everyone. Saw de los Angeles several times, saw her Desdemona where in the final act she was as perfect as the act itself, with, I think, James McCracken to match her, one of the few legitimate Otellos of the day. A very satisfying Iago who might actually have been Gobbi – I’ll try to find the program or an internet copy to be sure – I remember an interview with Gobbi when he was in town, a stalwart of the Music Station introducing him as he of the “million dollar voice,” and Gobbi modestly said “thank you” – his English was very good.

Of course there were other musical greatest greats we saw as often as we could – Heifetz and Piatigorsky and Rubinstein. And a whole string and series of conductors, some permanent with the L.A. Philharmonic, some guests – Leinsdorf and Walter and Giulini and Bernstein and Mehta (the first resident conductor of my experience, the excitement of snagging him so pervasive that the ushers were all dressed in high collar long coats, India style to honor him and set the tone).

And Dorothy Warenskjold, the first world class live voice I heard live when I was young and my Father took the family to one of the Community Concerts, a series across the country that brought quality art to the out-of-the-way peripheral to the main stream, I thought about Sol Hurok, and remembered being essentially overwhelmed by the glorious rich resonant and very loud voice issuing from the stage we were sitting close to, a singer who was also on actual records we could buy, and did, and who seems never to have had a significant enough reputation that I felt deserved more acclaim, a presence, and I was there to hear it, and that began my listening career for the rest of my life, starting on a high note (yes, the pun’s intentional).

And all those missed opportunities, the greats who didn’t come to us, and we couldn’t afford to go to them. Birgit Nilsson, the great Wagnerian Soprano after Flagstad, who made the role of Turandot her own, scheduled to sing it in L.A., cancelled, and we saw and heard Lucille Udovik, a commendable alternative but no Nilsson.

And Leontyne Price, iconic, scheduled to bring Aida to L.A., cancelled, and we saw a paler version, where the Amneris of Irene Dalis impressed me more by the size and beauty of her voice, when in the duet with Aida she couldn’t help downsizing, and we wished for Leontyne.

And Cornell McNeil satisfied as Rigoletto when we couldn’t get Gobbi, if I remember rightly.

So many missed opportunities.

I didn’t want to add Renee Fleming to the wished but missed list.

And expanding our early opera experience as much as we could and could afford, the cheap seats up higher, where they relegated the assumed unwashed, but we knew the music and could sing along, while those below in the Founders Circle made their presence known and tried to stay awake.

UCLA, Royce Hall, gave us Les Huguenots, rarely performed, we could see why, the shortened version only four hours long, but My God! It isn’t Wagner, and Wagner’s too much (as Ossie said, you need sitzfleisch), and, another little-performed, Louise, the one aria opera, and of course Weil’s Mahagonny when we took our friends because of the one great song and we had to sit through all the rest.

All of this is a background of listening and judging to provide a context for Renee Fleming.

And we parked in a nearby structure in plenty of time for me to walk over. And almost no one wearing masks because they believed the bulletins about the pandemic being over, but we wore ours because we knew better, and cared about us and them. And the usual crowds of excitement, the fellow from the elevator who wanted to share and justify his enthusiasm, “She does have a great voice,” establishing himself as in-the-know.

And ushered to our seats by the usher I complimented at intermission, asked again “where’s the tip jar?” an old joke I replay too often, and she responded in kind, “If there were, you’d contribute?” so I knew I’d met my match and of course I said “Yes.”

And then the dimming lights, the usual personable potentate extending the usual welcome, and then Renee herself, extravagantly flowing gown, her noted accompanist following, to the center stage and piano, and she began with the usual good to be back, and then talking to us as real people sharing, telling us how covid interrupted her career as it did for everyone, how she spent a lot of time at home, and taking long walks into nature which she got to know better, and the renewed realization of the value and fragility of everything, and global warming needs more talk to lead to action, how she worked with National Geographic to produce a film a video we’d see about life on earth and our place and what we’re losing, and she devised a theme for a concert she could tour, music she could relate.

We thought of course of the concert last year in the same auditorium when Joyce di Donato, another in the vocal circle we knew from broadcasts, who devised her own similarly themed show around the awareness and celebration of the earth, the same deeply felt desire to reach out and help to change the stubborn unknowing and save the earth we love so much, an effort better than the philanthropy of those who flaunt themselves for recognition, but disappointing because the effort smacked of middle class thinking that doing something good is somehow enough, the missed opportunity for inclusion when the children’s choir, who sang proficiently, but rubbed our noses in their gated community of private school privilege, when we were so close to Oakland overlooked which would have established a moment of inclusion we so badly need if we’re to get anywhere at all, an effort not tokenism but not quite beyond it, and we hoped for so much, and now let’s see what Renee Fleming has in store, can give us.

So I didn’t want to be primed with qualified disappointment. I always want to think the best of everything and everyone. I do realize that I’m judgmental, hard to please. I think, sopranos again, how the French claimed Regine Crespin as a National Treasure, a singer of superb voice and beautiful power, when they announced to the world, “We don’t need your Wagnerian sopranos, we have our own.”

And I agree and am a fan, but there I am again, judging, assessing. For example, that virtually perfect French song cycle, Les nuits d’ete, where Crespin sings with a carefully controlled beauty, rather the way Renee Fleming sings with a similar self-aware beauty of voice that sometimes allows her to settle back into the sound and consequently draws her into singing some things just a little too slowly and the beauty of sound becomes the focus.

I think of Eleanor Steber’s performance of Les nuits d’ete, where the quality of the voice is not the prime focus, she immerses herself into the music and the text, and projects an integrated profound penetrating complete experience that I find preferable as (I think of as) a higher level of truth and art.

Sometimes I can be so judgmental that I almost can’t stand myself. And I do realize that I may not always be right.

And I think of Pavarotti, when he confessed that he thought Bjoerling was the greatest singer of the century, and when he, Pavarotti, sang, he said he tried to sing like Bjoerling. I don’t want to disagree with him. I do miss the Italian warmth not in Bjoerling’s cooler northern voice, I do respond to the assessment of Nils Grevillius, the conductor who so often accompanied Bjoerling, who remarked “the endless effortless golden flow of sound unlike anything I have ever heard.” And I remember with the appropriate chuckle when Bjoerling in his autobiography relates the incident when he took his daughter to the movies to see a film of Mario Lanza and he leaned toward her and asked, “What do you think of this tenor?” and she said, “He’s so handsome!”

Competition among tenors, among singers, when Pavarotti knew the slight raw roughness of forcing the sound to ring, which he called the wild tenor sound, where the highest notes are a forced triumph, when Bjoerling sang with the effortless assurance of being already there, the clever mental projection of being above the sound so when you produce the sound you’re coming down to it with the comfortable controlled assurance, not forcing your way up into the uncertainty of whether or not you’ll actually make it, take the risk, and the relieved triumph that at least this time you got it, hit the note, and they dubbed you King of the High C’s and you knew it was always touch and go.

And I think, for example, of Alfredo Krauss, Spanish with his surprisingly German name, who was renowned for the effortless ease of his upper register, a beautiful clarity of unforced tone, and the apparent but unadmitted jealousy of tenors, when Jose Carreras, another superb tenor in his early career who had to try to force his way back after debilitating illness, and as one of the Three Tenors had to push his voice to try to compete with Pavarotti and Domingo to justify his place with them, how when he was put in charge of the musical selection for the Barcelona Olympics, and of course he included and featured Caballe as representing Spain’s best, but excluded Alfredo Krauss, who was deeply wounded by this omission, and would have provided a basis for comparison which Carreras at that point could not assure in his own favor, though I don’t think the snub was ever acknowledged.

And maybe I’m just trying to explain things I notice, and, as always, I admit I may be wrong about some things, I may not know enough to judge.

And I notice that I sometimes notice some things that maybe don’t deserve extra notice. I remember, for example, when Dietrich Fischer Dieskau announced that he was retraining his voice to strengthen the lower register, and when we heard him live sing Die Winterreise, that acknowledged greatest of all song cycles, and he came to Number 5, “Der Lindenbaum” and the voice drops down to “Die kalten Winde bliessen,” I chuckled, thinking, “He’s showing off his “new” lower register.” And I tried not to be smug, acknowledging that I knew the demands and when I sang it myself, I did already have it in my voice.

And Fischer Dieskau was and still is one of my vocal heroes, announced by me so early as I walked across the UCR campus after hearing a recital, that my two Baritone Gods were Leonard Warren and Dietrich Fischer Dieskau, and their voices and repertoire were sufficiently different that they weren’t in competition and I didn’t have to choose one over the other.

And, thinking Leonard Warren, I think of my wife’s parents, my in-laws though I didn’t use the term, Jimmy studying voice with a competent reputable teacher, and we knew and heard other fellow students in performance, and Virginia, his wife, who wanted so badly to sing opera, and took what he passed on to her from his lessons because it would have been too expensive to have them both study with the same teacher when he could just bring it home to share, and he did, somewhat, and her voice got larger, following her idol Rise Stevens, and Leonard Warren was Jimmy’s choice of baritone, matching my own choice, but Virginia chose Robert Merrill she liked better, I think partly because he was still alive and singing on television, and seemed younger and she thought better looking, but I decided that she just didn’t know Warren well enough.

And thinking judgmental, I remember how Shirley and I took her parents to see Victoria de los Angeles at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, because she didn’t come to L.A. often enough, and I took this opportunity to share, and we had seats higher up in one of the balconies because that was all we could afford, and down below de los Angeles stood in the spotlight by the piano and sang a series of Spanish songs, many of which I knew and loved, her clear lovely beautiful voice penetrating the cavernous spaces and reaching us in the balcony, and Shirley’s parents were negatively impressed because it wasn’t just all opera and they said “Her voice is too small.” They wanted Rise Stevens who could push the resound, almost the way Ethel Merman famously belted out the voice to knock open the back doors of the auditorium.

I thought sadly, my wife’s parents just don’t know, and there’s no way of telling them, because they just won’t recognize or agree, and the repertoire was foreign to them. Jimmy was trained to use and fill the mask, that invisible region just in front of the nose where you push the sound by sharpening it, and somehow resonate the head tones in your apparently partly empty head. Even Shirley admitted that the forced extruded shrill-edged sound was not to her taste.

But I digress.

Speaking of Renee Fleming, and I realize that I was putting it off because I didn’t want to say what I would have to say, and so I take the good and positive first.

I really like Renee Fleming, a lot. And I like and approve of the focus for the concert, an awareness, concern, caring for and support for the planet and the life on it. I applaud her success in enlisting the National Geographic to echo her focus and collaboratively produce the beautiful video designed to stir the heart, evoke the sense of loss, and leave us open and ready to support the action needed now to save the planet.

I like the venue, a well-designed auditorium to fit the needs of quality presentation. I liked the ushers chosen for their friendly intelligence to help set the tone and prepare us for the event. I chatted with the one who didn’t have a tip jar, and after the lockdown was lifted and the “incident” apparently contained, I told her when she reappeared after the late intermission, because apparently I like talking to people, “Your presence makes me feel secure.” I said it because I meant it, because I was still in the enthusiasm of the presentation’s moment and we had already seen the film, and because I wanted to go beyond just sitting still, I wanted to say something nice. I decided she would understand because she had already let me babble on, and because ushers tend to be underappreciated.

And I was sitting next to my Daughter on my right, Chaz one over, and a patron of the arts on my left, a somewhat older woman though younger than me, whose husband sat on her left and looked around and squirmed in his seat.

And the lady was friendly neighborly in a talkative reach out way, checking her phone for news of the incident, commenting on the concert at the beginning before it started, how she had scanned the program and told me she was most looking forward to the aria. “O mio babbino caro” from Gianni Schicchi, which she had already determined would be the highlight of the performance, and she wanted to establish her credibility by letting me know she had heard it before, that she and her husband, she gestured to him and said in not so many words that concert going was an experience he was still adjusting to, letting me know she was more advanced, in the know, told me they had seen “The Three” in Italy.

I didn’t add yes, Il Trittico, which would lord it over her that I knew more than she did, but I did go on (and on) about the best performance of Suor Angelica, the last of the three operas when others were writing operas in three acts and Puccini gave us three complete operas in one act each, how at the end when the little baby runs toward Suor Angelica and de los Angeles gives the most perfect cry, better than any others I’ve heard, and how in Gianni Schicchi she makes the aria which we were going to hear tonight and was now universally iconic, seem vocally higher than it was written, a kind of vocal magic to make Lauretta young and vulnerable and pleading, and my seat mate, knowing she was outclassed, said well there are other beautiful parts to the opera, and I didn’t mention how my Father, ahead of me in so many other ways because he spoke Latin and ancient Greek, endured the wonderful interplay of the relatives until the love duet breaks forth at the end and he said, “Here it is at last, melody,” and I knew, young and inexperienced as I was, that in some ways I had transcended my Father, and my seat mate said, “and the opera’s very funny,” and I said, “Yes, it is.”

And Kristina on my right said afterwards, “Her husband was getting jealous at the attention you were paying his wife,” and I said, “I hadn’t noticed. We were just talking, and I was trying to disguise my one-upmanship on voice and opera…”

And the program, carefully curated, to keep some relevance to the announced theme, some of it expected like Handel’s “Care selve” from Atalanta, and Canteloube’s “Balairo” from Chants d’Auvergne, always a delight as the songs like an endlessly perfect flow of each to the next are now more and more a staple in everyone’s repertoire because finally we all know, like with Orff’s Carmina Burana, music more nearly of our own time has reached and can produce the perfection we haven’t lost after all when those former ages of music all seemed to know and they may be gone but the music is not.

And the concert, insistently eclectic to be inclusive, also ranged from Bjork to Bacharach and we knew it wasn’t just pandering.

And just as we broke for intermission, the Official came on stage with a microphone to calm any concerns of possible panic, there was a response to an incident in the plaza and we were, he tried to avoid the term lockdown, allowed to intermission in the lobby but the outside doors were to remain closed and locked and off limits, and he would tell us more when information was available, we could stay in our seats and the concert would continue when events…”

And that’s when I chatted with the woman on my left, and thanked the usher. My seatmate’s phone research had revealed that shots were fired, apparently no one hurt, the plaza cordoned off, hundreds of students rushed for refuge in the Student Union, her son in a dorm further away had heard the shots.

And then finally, after a very long intermission, we were back on track, the incident was contained, and Renee Fleming came out in an eye-catching new flowing dress and with a microphone prepared us for the second half with the mood-lightening comment that “I always want my performances to be memorable, just not this memorable.”

And we were ready for the rest.

And we began with two wonderful songs by Faure, Renee identified as among her favorites, and mine too, “Les bercaux” in particular because I could sing it and because I first heard it on my recording of Leonard Warren’s concert tour of Russia in 1960, and you could feel his own special affection for the song as it fit and displayed the voice, and then two by Grieg, very satisfying, and then the aria.

Puccini, “O mio babbino caro,” and my seat mate the woman on my left sat up straighter in her chair and I welcomed the aria I too loved, and Renee sang it with the same recognition of its place in the world’s esteem and affection.

And I, who wanted to hear the fragility of the young girl begging her father, something that de los Angeles was able to convey, missed it but sympathized with Renee, may I call her Renee? recognizing that at 64 she was still able to sing with great beauty but with greater effort, how she had to gird herself for the high note, hit it, held it, hoped we didn’t notice or would forgive and forget what we heard as she hoisted herself. Still a beautiful moment.

And we remembered the announcement by the Master of Ceremonies how donated money had allowed the inclusion of fifty students from area schools young people into the audience, and we looked around to see if we could tell where they were, and the audience seemed almost entirely of middle age or older, and the realization again that we’re losing culture itself, realizing again that the present is built on the past, and when the past is lost, the present collapses to a lower level, we’re diminished, and the now generation doesn’t know from lower, even those who still can read, and those earlier successive golden ages, one after the other, are less than forgotten memories when memories are unknown.

Degeneration needs regeneration, a theme of the concert, tokenism won’t do it, well-meaning isn’t enough, and fifty in the audience, a start, assuaging those who feel the need to do something, is only a small drop in a very large bucket, the crisis of too-little-too-late for what we’re losing, have already lost.

And so we had next Jerome Kern’s “All the things you are,” reminding us of the music of former days, of holding on to what really matters, but sung I felt too much like a torch song to pander to those elements in the audience. I thought of Eileen Farrell, that great American soprano of Wagnerian capability, who wanted to expand her opportunities to sing what she wanted and produced the famous album, “I’ve Got a Right to Sing the Blues,” which offended the opera “purists” but expanded the audience for singing, with a voice of power very much like our most recent example of Jessye Norman.

But I’ve digressed again.

And then Renee’s re-wording of “The Diva” to allow us to bounce with her as she spanned her career with passing references, The Marschallin, one of her great roles, and then her self-reflexive joke about a woman of an indeterminate certain age, and of course she laughed as we did with her, knew she hadn’t reached too late, knew and sympathized with her not yet acknowledged awareness of where and when and how.

We all knew, those of us who knew, there was never ever any danger of becoming Florence Foster Jenkins, that was on another planet not in her stars, I still haven’t seen the movie, want to, have the record, played it several times, the other side an even greater vocal disaster where a group below average, funny if it weren’t so painful, tried to do Carmen and instead did it in, and I tried to be charitable and said, “At least they wanted to sing, if only,” and it’s Renee’s fault because her joke made me think of it and I forgive us both, and none of this last is at all related to Renee Fleming except to say it’s not related and she’s not, in no way, and sorry I even brought it up.

And the concert was over, applause, most the standing ovation, clapping, cheers, and we knew, at least those of us who had been to concerts knew, and the neophytes immediately learned the ropes, that walking off stage to applause, and a slight pause for the clapping, means it brings back for the obligatory encore.

This time Leonard Cohen’s Alleluia, with audience participation in the refrain, a good and clever choice, if not ending on a high note, ending with something better, reminding us of the theme of the concert, ending in common cause and together.

So it wasn’t a case of “not a dry eye in the house,” no tears except maybe of joy, but inclusion had transcended and left us primed for a better future.

At least that’s the way I saw it, the way I took it.

And we left the auditorium, crowded by the yellow police tape away from the plaza to the long way around, through the parking garage, across the street, through the arcade walk-through past the closed bookstores where I couldn’t linger to look through the windows.

I walked without the support of my sticks, to the next parking where Chaz was waiting in the long slow-moving line at the machine to pay for parking while Kristina and I took the crowded elevator up to wait in the car, and then home.

And I mixed my thoughts to joy of the occasion, the shared experience, suppressing and sidelining the uncertainty of how I would add this to my list, the weak but present disappointment supplanted by the unarguable loveliness, by the satisfaction of another “at last,” by the fact that recordings and videos of the best at the peak were there to sustain me, and then we were home again, and together, and had been and shared together, and I can say to myself again and to the world and anyone listening, after all, life is good.