Summer 2001
It seemed like such an indulgent thing to do, spend $125 on an opera ticket. We’ll take two, Elliot told the man behind the glass ticket window, except he told him in Spanish. Impulsive and indulgent. But just the sort of thing you should do on a “second honeymoon,” even if it is just two years after the first honeymoon.
Elliot and I came to Madrid to see the capital city of the country where he had served his mission for our church from 1995 - 1997. Because his mission was headquartered in Bilbao, in the northeastern corner of the country, he had never had the chance to visit Madrid. While the Atlantic coastal cities are underestimated, he believes, it didn’t seem right for him never to have been to Madrid.
We stayed with a college friend who was living in the city for the summer doing an internship at some international consulting firm. But after catching a post-season bullfight with him on our first day in town, he left town for the week and we were on our own with our own apartment as a base for our adventures.
Of course the appropriately regal Palacio Real was on our list of must-sees, adjacent to the Plaza de Oriente. Opposite the Palace, we were delighted to stumble upon the city’s opera house, the Teatro Real. We greeted its discovery as tourists do with most of the buildings they stumble on during walks through an old city: we looked up, admired the facade, and then Elliot backed up to take a picture of me (with very bad hair, as I was trying to grow out a spiky boy cut) in front of it.
Our indifference, however, changed when we stopped to read a poster outside the box office: Fidelio, Beethoven’s only opera, was playing that night with Daniel Barenboim conducting the Berlin Opera. The luminaries continued: Rene Pape, my favorite bass, and Deborah Voight, world renown soprano. That’s when we bought the tickets. I had attended so many operas with my parents when, as a child, we had traveled through Europe that once the tickets were purchased it seemed like such a normal and natural thing for us to do on our own European adventure.
A hundred and twenty-five dollars landed us in the first row, to the right of the conductor. Our proximity reminded me of the first time I had seen Fidelio: December 1983, a month before I turned seven years old, my dad took me across the street from our house to the Metropolitan Opera where Bernard Haitink conducted Eva Marton as Leonora. Seated on the first row, right behind Haitink, I carefully unwrapped my mints during intermission so as not to make noise after the lights went down. After the final notes, Haitink, the stern Dutch from a bygone era, turned to the applauding audience to bow. That’s when he winked at me. I kept the program and slipped it between the pages of my journal when I got home.
Although Barenboim didn’t wink at us this time, the memorable production directed the conquering prince in the opera’s last scene to stand in the aisle beside us, leading his victorious army of chorus members a mere arm’s length away. We walked back to our apartment through the balmy night, reveling in the serendipity that had brought this musical highlight into our international adventure.
Summer 2009
I have only a moment to glance at the Opera’s billboards. Already feisty, my baby arches her back in her stroller when I merely pause to read the poster. Rigoletto, I think it says. Paying a visit to the box office is out of the question: walking a baby to sleep through the trimmed bushes of the Plaza de Oriente is my task at hand today, while Elliot plays with my two other children at the Plaza’s adjacent playground. I didn’t even notice this playground the last time we were here. It’s been a busy eight years since that night at the opera. Three children, two cities, and one graduate degree later, we’re back in Madrid, but operas aren’t on the agenda this time.
I pace the path leading from the Opera House towards the Palace. The McClaren stroller bumps along the cobblestone path, providing a soothing rhythm as we pass statues of past Spanish kings and couples lounging on the shaded grass. Two boys with long blonde hair lie on their backs, strumming guitars and harmonizing with each other as they sing German songs. Their words punctuate the romantic lull of the Spanish din. All of Madrid seems to be out, hand in hand, enjoying the evening breeze after a typically scorching day. The baby finally gives up the fight and bows her head for a power nap.
Still jetlagged from our trip from the States, my two older girls are full of energy even after having toured the Palace earlier in the day. They hardly notice the evening has arrived and they beg to be pushed on the playground swings. Elliot sits with the baby, reading the Eyewitness Guide to Madrid while I push the other two.
Everything of course is just a little different from home, here in Madrid, and that is the joy of bringing small children abroad. They notice the playground has gravel instead of concrete like our playground at home. The infant swings have a different type of harness which intrigues them. My oldest daughter strains to understand the other children playing around her since she attends a Spanish immersion school at home. She feels different, out of place, but after all, that’s why we bothered to drag our three little ones across the ocean. So they would know there’s a whole other world out there where the way they do things isn’t they only way to do things.
But companion to the humility of travel is the opportunity to find common ground, to experience those merciful similarities running through human culture no matter where you are. As I push my ecstatic daughters through the air, just as I would at home, I pick out a few familiar notes among the din of the Plaza’s bustle. Chopin. A piano ballade, played very nearby. The pianist practices a passage over and over again. The fourth ballade. My favorite. The one my piano teacher always performed at the end of our student concerts, either as encouragement to us youngsters or as a “you can’t touch this” warning to stay in awe of her. I never could tell. Either way, it was glorious. The sound comes from an open window overlooking the Plaza playground -- Madrid’s conservatory.
To have this as my playground soundtrack seems a tender offering from the same city that offered me the Fidelio eight years before. My travels may be different these days as I start anew to cultivate small passions in my children rather than indulging my own, but the air itself carries joys that remind me this experience is not just for them. It's for me, too.
