Take Me Out to the Opera

A woman was stabbed to death by a jealous lover in full view of tens of thousands of fans at the San Francisco Giants’ ballpark on Saturday night.

The victim was identified only as Carmen, a factory worker. The murder suspect was Don Jose, a burly army deserter.

The motive, apparently, was jealousy. Carmen had transferred her affections from Don Jose to a bullfighter named Escamillo. The soldier begged her to take him back. When she refused, he slit her throat.

The crowd was momentarily silent, then erupted in cheers and applause. Escamillo, Don Jose and a resuscitated Carmen, now wearing Giants caps and jerseys, bowed, as did a large cast of singers, dancers and musicians.

So ended another edition of Opera at the Ballpark, the San Francisco Opera’s campaign to expand its audience by simulcasting its productions on the big screen at AT&T Park. (The ballpark’s regular tenants were playing the Diamondbacks in Arizona.)

I had been looking forward to the novelty of seeing “Carmen” in such a setting, but when I entered the stadium I had to swallow my disappointment at not being there to watch a ballgame. It’s a Pavlovian thing with me: I walk into a ball yard and I immediately want a hot dog, a scorecard, and a 6-4-3 double play.

The turnout for “Carmen” astonished me. While the upper deck was empty, the two lower decks were entirely full. And unlike at a baseball game, the outfield grass was covered from foul line to foul line with picnic blankets.

We found seats down the right field line, which exposed us to the chilly breeze of a San Francisco summer evening, but afforded a fine view of San Francisco Bay in the light of the setting sun.

Unfortunately, we were soon joined by a woman who was more stinko than anyone I have encountered since I lived among the Woo people. She delivered beers to her buds two rows in front of us and launched into a monologue that competed in volume with Carmen’s mezzo-soprano, Don Jose’s tenor and Escamillo’s bass-baritone.

As far as I could tell she was not paying the least attention to what was happening on the big screen, which made me wonder why the devil she had come.

Thus distracted, I, too, ceased attending to the opera and, like Don Jose, began entertaining my own murderous thoughts. Actually, my plan was to tap her on the shoulder and ask her, in the politest possible way, to keep her voice down. But before I could spring into action, someone a few seats away from me pegged crumpled paper at her nattering head.

This complicated matters, for if I followed through on my plan to speak to her, she might assume that I was the one who had bopped her on the bean, and one of her companions looked like a tougher customer than I wanted to deal with.

But when I saw, or rather heard, that the bean ball had not had its desired effect – had not, in the parlance of the game normally played at this venue, moved her off the plate – I threw caution to the winds.

My entreaties had their desired effect, at first. We sat back, ate our Turkish takeout and watched Carmen cast her seductive spell on poor Don Jose.

But it is with drunks as with love, about which Carmen sings, “Nothing helps, neither threat nor prayer.” Soon, the yakker’s volume had crept back up to 11 on a scale of 1 to 10. So I shushed her again.

To my surprise, the tough customer, embarrassed, apparently, by all this unwanted attention, hoisted the drunk to her feet and he, she and a second woman abruptly left, to golf gallery applause. The second woman cursed and reminded us that this was a free concert. The only sense I could make of this remark was that something you get for nothing has no value and therefore is unworthy of respect.

The rest of the evening proceeded pleasantly. During intermission the crowd sang “Take Me Out to the Opera.” Best line: “Buy me a seat at the Opera House. / I don’t care if it’s Mozart or Strauss.”

After intermission we found seats out of the wind and ate our Jewish pastries. Then came Don Jose’s bloody deed, followed by the Giants-inflected curtain calls. As we made our way out of the ballpark, I realized that opera and baseball have one thing in common, apart from a devoted fan base, at least in San Francisco: They each take a good three hours from start to finish.

The takeaway, for you State College readers: It is indeed time for the Nittany Lions to share the Beaver Stadium turf with other kinds of spectacle. I don’t care if it’s Mozart or Strauss. Or Springsteen.