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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 5, 2003)
december S. 2003 » J u s t o u t 4 1 HUMOR ..........▼.............. F A Where night at the opera are the gay opera singers? ive years ago I walked away from a promis ing career in opera. My career was promis ing to he lousy, so 1 walked away. 1 wouldn’t say I was had. In fact, most of my performances earned mixed reviews: 1 thought 1 was terrific, and the critics didn’t. So it was with great shock and awe that 1 received, out of the wild blue sky, an offer to sing with the Portland Opera. (Actually, since it’s Portland, it was the wild gray sky.) It wasn’t much— three minutes of singing as the Emperor of China in Puccini’s Turandot— hut I’m used to secondary roles. Since 1 possessed more ambition than talent, I had scratched my way to the middle portraying various hunch- hacks, mad scientists, drunks and simpletons. More importantly, taking the gig gave me a chance to work with my friend C ynthia Hay- mon, who is one of my favorite singers and, also, one of my favorite people. C ynthia is African American hut, unlike a number of black sopranos, she eschews the grand manners that make divas sound like they are native speakers of Hungarian. No, C ynthia keeps it real. “We weren’t just poor,” she says of her upbringing as a preacher’s daughter in the Deep South. “We were po’. We couldn’t afford the extra o or the r.” Now, opera is a surprisingly conservative busi ness. While there are a number of high-profile black women, audiences rarely see black men romancing white women onstage. And while gay directors, designers and secondary singers abound, there are still very tew gay leading tenors. (Thar being said, I have known a few gay niners; that is, if their AOL profiles are to be believed.) So, as marginalized minorities, Cynthia and I stick together, amusing ourselves during long THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARC b y M a rc A cito rehearsals by pretending we’re victims of a vast operatic conspiracy. For instance, I made my entrance atop a 20- foot-tall platform. My costume was actually built into the throne, giving me 6-foot shoul ders, like Carol Burnett as Scarlett O ’Hara with the curtain rod in her dress. For safety reasons I had to be strapped in. W hen Cynthia saw this, she sidled up to me and whispered, “Y’know, th at’s just another way they keep a brother down.” “It’s a conspiracy,” I concurred. “I’m callin’ A1 Sharpton,” she replied. ynthia actually does have something to complain about, having suffered real slights and indignities through the years— like the time she showed up at an opening night party in Texas and was mistaken for the help. As for me, I get into trouble just for being my own outrageous self. In this production, which ran last month, my first vocal entrance was sung unaccompa nied, so during the tech rehearsal I took advan tage of the silence by looking down at the cho- C ms, spreading my arms wide and singing, “D on’t cry for me, A rgentina....” 1 think of it as boosting morale. And 1 once made three dozen pieces of that when the chorus of Die Fledermaus “A toast! A toast! A ttxxxxxrast!” instead of champagne flutes they all raised slices of marbled rye. Luckily, the stage managers at Portland Opera have a sense of humor, as wit nessed when they would call me to the stage to get strapped in by saying: “Mr. A cito to stage left to get loaded. Mr. Acito, stage left to get loaded.” (Note to self: Tell stage management that Mr. Acito prefers Absolut.) T he Emperor is quite old, with a large cactus-shaped head dress that made me kx>k like the dog in Hou> the Grinch Stole Christmas. I decided to play him as a cross between the pope and Katharine Hepburn in O n Golden Pond, com plete with tremulous voice and shak ing head. A t the dress rehearsal, however, the director told me to lose the shake. W ith all the light shimmering off my crown, he said, it’s like my own private disco up there. This is not the first time I’ve had to be reined in. W hen I played one of the gypsy smugglers in Canncn the director said to me, "Marc, may 1 remind you, the opera is called Carmen, not Remendado, Prince of Smugglers." A nother director once told me 1 had to tone down my performance because 1 didn’t seem to be in the same opera as everyone else. I kx>ked around at the lackluster pro duction and suggested that perhaps everyone else would be happier in mine. Now you under stand why I don’t do this very often. Maybe th a t’s why there are so few gay leading men: We c a n ’t fit our o u tra geous selves into som eone else’s opera. It’s a conspiracy, 1 tell you. I’m callin’ Howard Dean. And that, my friends, is The Gospel Accord ing to Marc, j n M a R( : AciTO’s first runvl, How I Paid for College, uill he published in September 2004. 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