A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Opera

Lisa recently published a blog titled, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Monster Truck Show.” Hers is a nice story about giving away tickets to the Monster Truck Show. For some, that would be a great act of kindness, for me the kindness would be the sucker who took the tickets off my hand. However, I shouldn't be so harsh on some people's idea of a great time. After all, there were people who actually enjoyed disco. I didn't associate with any of them, but Lisa's story reminded me of this experience during the waning years of disco. By the way, just to dispel any rumors since I'm often portrayed as a rugged mountain man with a dirty hat, I have been to more than just one opera… This particular event happened in '81 or '82 and I still get a chuckle thinking about today


I couldn't believe the traffic on highway 76, also known as Independent Boulevard. Five days a week, this was a hectic road, but it was a Saturday afternoon and the cars along the main drag into Charlotte were so thick the highway was nearly a parking lot. Certainly all these folks weren’t going to see the Charlotte opera’s production of Madame Butterfly. We hoped to arrive in time to check in to our hotel, dress up and head out for dinner then to the show. As it was, we were afraid we’d not have time to even change clothes. As we got closer to Owen’s Auditorium, we noticed that everyone was turning in. I’d never imagined opera was that popular in North Carolina’s Queen City.

We still had a little over an hour to the show and our hotel was only a few blocks away. We drove on past the auditorium, ran through a fast food establishment and checked into the hotel, eating in our room as we dressed up. Instead of fighting traffic, we decided to walk back to the auditorium. As we walked, moving faster than the cars turning into the parking lot, I read the shared marquee. The auditorium and the old Charlotte Coliseum were next door to each other and, as folks in suits and fancy dresses were promenading into hall for opera, others dressed much more comfortably stampeded into the coliseum to see monster trucks and over-sized tractors duel it out. I was worried that we’d be late as the tickets made it very clear that latecomers would only be seated between acts and was glad to find that we just beat the clock. We found our seats just in time a red-faced conductor to step out on the stage. He stumbled as he apologized over and over, saying that he’d never had to do this before, but because of the traffic for the event next door, they didn’t have enough musicians in the pit to perform the opera. That evening, Madame Butterfly started with a thirty minute intermission.

Madame Butterfly was beautifully staged. We enjoyed the show immensely. But I couldn’t help but to think, as Butterfly was croaking with a knife in her guts and the curtain falling, that folks next door were watching tractor’s play tug-of-war and trunks with over-sized wheels drive over junk cars. Although Puccini would have rolled in his grave, I chuckled at the thought of bringing the two sides together with a monster truck opera featuring the band Queen. All this was over a quarter century ago; I have yet to write the opera. Maybe tomorrow.