The Opera

On Saturday night, my husband, friend, and I went to the baseball stadium to see a simulcast of the Washington National Opera’s production of The Barber of Seville.

The opera was irritating—plot and character development were vintage Hallmark: reliant on stereotype and cheap humor, and sludged in sentiment. Cheap humor of course is timeless; when delivered in arias, it feels endless.

The plot climax was uniquely infuriating. The highest moment of tension: the heroine was furious because she suspected her lover had deceived her. The moment of joyful resolution: the heroine discovered that her lover in fact had deceived her.

Nevertheless, watching simulcast opera on a baseball stadium scoreboard, surrounded by the glaring paraphernalia of corporate sponsors, was surprisingly lovely.

The loveliest part was the number of bicycles parked around the stadium. Every one of the 250 bike racks that surround the stadium was full. I had to lock to a sapling. Most of the bikes didn’t belong to the usual suspects—they weren’t high end racing bikes or carefully abused fixies. Families had biked in—with trailers or kid bike carriers, little kid bikes. Well-used hybrids and mountain bikes mingled with beaters, steel fixies, road bikes, and (of course) the requisite fendered Schwinn.

The was the first time in the United States that I have felt that bicycles were an accepted form of transportation—not just the mode of choice for the few and the proud. Obama’s inauguration in January gave some faint forecast of this—but Americans only took to their bikes in droves that day (over 2000 bikes were parked in WABA’s bike valets!) because other transportation methods were blocked.

I was irritated that we had to listen to a member of the Washington National Orchestra play the Star Spangled Banner before the opera began. I grudgingly put up with this ritual before sports games, understanding that patriotism, nationalism, and physical competition are psychologically synonymous enough to warrant it. Why were we forced to be patriotic for an Italian opera?

However, as I left the stadium and saw the gorged bike racks and the droves of people leaving by metro, I was proud of my city.