My friends know that I love jazz. Few know that I am really an opera child.
During World War II, the San Francisco Opera had trouble finding men for its chorus. So my dad, Philip Doan, got one of the positions, partly because he had a deferment for working at Standard Oil.
He loved singing the great music of Verdi, Wagner and Puccini, but he was awfully loud around the house. He would swear when he missed a high note, unnerving us all.
As a baby, my parents played opera music around the house, hoping it would stick with me. I thought they said they did that in utero too, but that sounds ridiculous.
Opera didn’t really click with me, but I loved the pop tunes of the early 1950s. This was too early for rock ‘n’ roll. This was Perry Como, Rosemary Clooney and Mitch Miller. That irritated my father, no end. My youthful rebellion.
My biggest exposure to opera came on several train trips to follow my dad and the opera on tour. I’ve told this before: the great baritone Salvatore Baccalone sat me on his lap and asked if I would be a tenor like my father when I grew up. “Nobody’s gonna make a tenor outta me!” I said (Wrong!)
The opera company traveled to the unsophisticated sticks: Seattle, Portland, Sacramento. And oh—the sleepy hamlet of Los Angeles, which did not have an opera company!
In L.A., we always stayed at the Figueroa Hotel, which would serve Carmen Salad, Figaro roast beef and Faust potatoes for the whole opera company. I ca’t believe it—I actually sang my pop songs to the old ladies in the lobby.
Once, when I was 10, in 1952, the Long Beach Boys’ Choir did not have enough kids for La Boehme, and my father enlisted me to perform without singing.
Wow, what an adventure that was! They had huge doors at the Shrine Auditorium to let in horses ocasionally. Really? On stage? I looked off the stage and realized that performers can’t see the audience because of the lights.
The role of a street urchin was a lot of fun, but I was jealous when I found out that the other kids had stolen real food off the pretend food carts (or was it backstage?) Why didn’t I get any?
Though I was now a skilled, experienced opera performer, my next gig didn’t come for another 60 years. After I took voice lessons, I talked a singer I knew into getting me into a little opera company’s shows in Washington. It put on performances at embassies, inviting 100 or so wealthy guests to feast on dinner and see their costly shows. I found it challenging to learn the music for La Forza del Destino and Tosca, and I sort of tagged along with the professionals around me in the chorus. Best of all, they gave us free food at the end of the show.
For five years, I did publicity for Opera Nova, a small Arlington group that put on one-hour condensed operas for school children. Why would they like opera? Because the plots are ridiculous, there is sword-fighting and screaming. I loved interviewing the children afterward to get their reactions.
Do I follow opera now? Well, not really. I did go to some Metropolitan Opera performances in the movies but I always nodded off by the second act. And I fell asleep during my one visit to the real Metropolitan Opera 10 years ago during Wagner’s Ring Cycle.
But I do still sing, mostly choral music and old standards with my piano. Now I am the one shrieking high notes at home, irritating those around me.
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