Appendix-Appendix: Paris

L’Opéra

Can’t recall what we went to see on that Wednesday evening in November. This third-balcony seat cost about five bucks. Sounds like a bargain, but maybe that’s just my 21st-century viewpoint talking.

This luminous anecdote truly belongs to 1963; maybe I’ll move it there. Christmas season, 1963, early evening. Elder C. Brooklyn “Beetle” Derr (my beloved friend and district leader) and I ventured forth for some gift-shopping. We walked down the Champs-Élysées to the Place de la Concorde. A light snow was falling (rare and magical), and as we continued into the Tuileries, we were the first to leave footprints. Then up the rue Castiglione through the Place Vendôme into the rue de la Paix. Several blocks before the Place de l'Opéra, we saw bright lights ahead and began to hear lovely Christmas music by a boys’ choir. As we stepped out onto the Place, we saw horse-drawn carriages emitting formally-attired passengers at the end of a red carpet, which extended the length of the Place and up the stairs of the Opéra. In bright floodlights, the arrivals proceeded under the shiny, crossed swords of the gorgeously-uniformed Garde Républicaine. All the while, the Petits Chanteurs de la Croix Rouge sang carols from the balconies. Serendipitous, breathtaking, unforgettable. We were moved to learn the next day that all this pageantry honored the opening of Berg’s Wozzeck, and we were told that this was the first performance of an opera by a German composer at l’Opéra, since the War and the Occupation.

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