The Pirates Strike Again !!!
May I urge you to read a fine article on Parterre Box,that deals with those dastardly villains known as "Tape Pirates." I am inspired by the mention of these crooks to offer you some absolutely true experiences in my life, and in the lives of other pirates.
1.  The guy who spent good money on a rather large phallic microphone in order to tape operas for Diana Soviero, since I was the best engineer for her.

2. Speaking of microphones, a friend was in Philly taping an opera from the orchestra, where you had to hold the mike in your lap pointing up.(I never did that...too annoying.) Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, the lady sitting next to him spied this "thing" and shockingly thought he was........NO,he wasn't!

3.Some dude pressed "play" instead of "record" at the Met at the start of some act, and you heard the end of the previous act!

4. All those tape pirates sat in the very front at Carnegie at the Eve Queler operas, since they were usually rare, and made sure they did not breathe so they would get good copies to sell on LP. One of them taped in stereo, with each mike under each armpit, and he looked as if he were DEAD for the entire show.

5. Making reel changes, before cassette machines, there is a trick to turning over the reel at the end of the tape, and if you did not want to lose anything, during a brief pause, you used your TEETH to change the reel...On e night the empty reel slipped out of the guy's mouth and it went down the Carnegie aisle...flop..flop..flop.

6. A fun guy who did not like someone who was taping, yelled from a box to the guy in the orchestra.."Hey..did you get a good tape???"

7. Once they saw a mike hanging down from a balcony, and I am told (this sounds crazy),that at a Caballe recitral, a BROOM HANDLE with a mike attached ascended from the orchestra..That I am not sure of...but I know Caballe did wait for some people to turn over the cassettes.

8. I cracked up when a friend was taping a Fischer-Dieskau recital where NO ONE BREATHES, even at a pause..He clicked to turn over the cassette, and he got looks equivalent to "Ve vill get zie barbed vire!" He never got part two!!!

9. At the Olivero Met debut Tosca, we all found it very hard to find a bathroom stall to change reels. I seem to have managed, but it wasn't easy. Speaking of stalls, one season at Carnegie, a guy came out of his stall, only to be confronted by a security guard!!!  Bye,bye, tape!!!!

10. The craziest thing a friend once rigged up was to put a reel machine in his car in the garage near Carnegie..and did some kind of thing with a wireless mike in his seat. Unfortunately, when he played the tape..he got things like, "Hey Joe...park it there!"
 

Nowadays,it is easy to tape with all the mini mikes,etc. I do not do it, because there is live Sirius stuff, Soviero retired, and you also end up not enjoyin g the show, since you are concentrating on the machine.
     So you see, opera pirate nutcases lived a dangerous existance (although I was NEVER sued!!!)

Ora arriviamo a la mia opera favorita (well, it used to be). Note the great "Guerra Geschrei" of that loud tenor, the makeup on the Aida (she had quite a tan from ther beaches in Cairo), the great Amneris, who interpolates a high note at the end of the duet with What a Mess. Only lacking here is what I saw....The performance with the chorus lady with a wristwatch! Well, it was Eastern Isis time.

NO ONE HERE could watch operas with this company without having an accident...... but we had fun......