Well, I got my first comment! And what a sweet comment it is, Danny...you inspired me to start this Blog...I hope you won't be sorry that you may have unleashed some unstoppable rants!!! (LOL) Not tonight though. Since you have encouraged me to write about ALL the Plays And Musicals And Concerts I have seen...well, like I said in my email to you, you have no idea how many wonderful incerdible Superb Theatre experiences I have had in my lifetime so far! Remember, I am old! Well, young at heart, of course, but pretty up-there in years....Given that, and because I grew up in a suberb very close to NYC and The Great White Way....our family went to the Theatre and Concerts and the Opera, all the time...I mean ALL the time...from the time I can first remember, I believe I was 4 (yes four years old) when I saw my first 'live' performance. I don't honestly remember weather it was a concert at Carnegie Hall, or an Opera at the old Metropolitan Opers House, but it was either one or the other....my three siblings and myself and my parents, (until they seperated and subsequently divorced,) all went together. My mother had worked at Bergdorf Goodman when she was 14 years old, (when everything was hand made--no ready to wear at all at that time), because she had to leave school and get a job, she was an expert sew-er as was my grandmother, my momma's momma. So, my mother made Opera capes for my two sisters and myself. Beautful BEAUTIUL Velvet, Silk Lined Capes that we wore to the Opera where we sat in a Box, yet. (My father,who had been dirt poor as a child, also had to leave school and get a job and he went down to Wall street at 14, and that's how he began his financial career, in which he did extremely well, I might add, but that's a whole other story....) Those capes that my mother made were absolutely gorgeous and so beautifully sewn, you cannot believe it. I am the youngest of my siblings so my cape was the smallest, of course....somewhere I still have that cape as a 'keepsake'; I couldn't throw it out after my mother died. The hours she had spent, lovingly sewing that cape, my Lord!!! It is a 'family treasure' to me.
There were many highlights in our Concert and Opera going....but I was so young, and we would go in the evening, mostly, that especially at the Opera where we would have a Box which had a little vestibule with a couch and some chairs, I would toddle off and lie down just to rest a little, you know, and of course would fall asleep. Well, you know when you are four or five years old....you get tired! I'm not sure when that changed but I think I couldn't have been more than six or seven when I didn't toddle off any longer. One concert I do remember vividly, was hearing Artur Rubenstein play in Carnegie Hall. We sat in Orchestra Seats there, and at the end of the concert, the audience would not let him go....encore after encore was played gloriously, and after each encore he would leave the stage and some people would think it was NOW over, and they would leave the Theatre. But, a core of people would not budge; kept applauding on and on and on....my oldest sister Robin was now very close to the stage with the other hardcore Rubenstein fans---the rest of our family was still back in the middle or so of the orchestra, waiting for Robin to decide that Mr. R. was done, and she could go home now. I don't remember how many encore's Rubenstein played, but he was still playing to a small coterie of people huddled right next to the edge of the stage, including Robin, of course, and the rest of us were still back in our seats....I was getting pretty tired, by now, (I was still very very young and it probably was close to eleven o'clock, (those were the days when Theatre things started at 8:30pm...I know, hard to believe isn't it?)....I don't know how often this magical phenomenal ending-kind-of-thing happened in concerts halls; it probably happened a lot with Mr. Rubenstein--such a relationship was in progress between Artist and Audience that even I, at that young age, knew something special was happening--well, look, I never forgot it; and it wasn't just cause I was getting tired! That was surely a pure Theatrical/Emotional experience in 'The Theatre' as I've been a part of, for sure. Well.....my shoulder muscle is beginning to be horribly sore from all this typing with one finger...yes, that's how I type---very fast I might add--cause I taught myself to type when I was about 9 years old and never bothered to learn any other way. Well, the one finger method has served me very very well, all these yearas, so, you know the old saying....if it ain't broke..etc., etc., etc. and that other one..'there are many roads to Rome...', well, my one-finger methos is one of those roads.....
More later, dear Danny and anyone else who might happen to read this. As far as I know, I have an audience of two. Danny and me....Later.