The Poodle Is Eye Candy

or

How I Learned to Love the Opera

Up till then, opening night as an extra in Arizona Opera's "La Bohème" was going well. I was volunteering as a supernumerary to appreciate firsthand an art whose allure had so far eluded me.

"Opera's an acquired taste, but once it grabs you, you become a fanatic," chorus member Juan Aguirre assures me. "It's kind of like beer."

At rehearsal, stage manager Keri Muir gives me the libretto, in Italian and English. It's a rosetta stone. When I've attended operas, I've felt I should understand through the music what's happening onstage. That may work for the broad strokes, but not the details. (Supertitles are helpful, but reading them and trying to pay attention to the stage is like doing homework while watching television.)

Director Michael Cavanagh tells me I'm to play a haughty Parisian -- "You will have a fabulous costume, I decree it!" -- during Act II. And I'll be walking that big poodle. It's eye candy, he says, meant to guide the audience's attention from one vignette to the next.

The next rehearsal is in costume, at Phoenix's Symphony Hall. On our first run- through, the stage seems impossibly crowded, what with the 50-member chorus, 33-member Phoenix Boys Choir, and seven principals. I concentrate on maneuvering Gates, the poodle, past everyone while not tripping on my floor- length skirt. I miss my second cue. The music may as well be rap: It all sounds alike to me.

Gates's owner, Jeannie Fornal, tells me she's been playing Puccini to familiarize the dog with the sound so she won't panic onstage. Good idea; I decide to do the same. The most beautiful part of Act II is when Musetta (in red velvet) sings her "When I am out walking ..." aria. It's so aching and passionate that it gives me goosebumps. "Bohème" is starting to affect me.

But what I learn most, I learn from the chorus. Chatting in the hallway during Act I, they pause in unison to hear the big moments when the doomed lovers Mimi and Rodolfo meet and fall in love. "Listen, he's going to hit a high C here on the word speranza," Andrew Gray says. "It means 'hope' and it's the whole point of the aria." The tenor hits it, and the chorus members nod and sigh. They talk about opera the way my friends and I talk about books. The plots are so over-the-top, given how highfalutin the genre's image is: lust in church ("Tosca"), nuns to the slaughter ("Dialogues of the Carmelites"), necrophilia ("Salome"). But they become powerful when sung in voices that tap both the lowest and highest registers of the sensibility.

"We cried every night," chorus member Shirley Beeson says of "Carmelites." "The music just pulls it out of you."

Opening night. The curtain rises. I stroll haughtily. Gates preens like a pro. I step on Musetta's train. Eighteen minutes later, the act ends. I change into my street clothes and linger in the hallway talking to the chorus. They assure me that things like train-stepping happen all the time.

Eight performances later, it's over. I'm the saddest I've been in a long time. I will miss the chorus and the thrill of promenading the stage in my fabulous costume. When I get home, I play my "La Bohème" recording and get teary -- not when Mimi dies, but when Musetta sings about lost love. All I need now is a beer.