mouth. Then she just started making the most beautiful, most spectacularly female sound you can imagine. Bellini didnât even try to write low notes for the character to make her sound more masculine. So Sonnier just sang away, making love to Juliet, but sounding like the most beautiful woman in the world.
It was a long ways between that opera and where I grew up in Dothan, Alabama. I admit I have no idea what I was supposed to feel, sitting there watching actors in painted faces and Renaissance costumes sing to each other. At first, hearing Romeo sing like a woman was disorienting, but after a while, I started to think about him in a new way. That high voice made him sound like a kid, which is what he was in the real play. For some reason heâs never played by sixteen-year-old boys. Usually thereâs some guy in his twenties or even thirties up on stage. That makes a big difference. Because listening to this high voice come out of Michele Sonnierâs exquisitely fine, delicate face, I started thinking that Romeo was just a victim of the system, powerless and naïve. He wasnât any stronger than Juliet, really, because they were both just children. He was fighting forces a lot bigger than he was, and he didnât even know it. Every time he opened up his mouth you realized right away that he was doomed. They gave the part of Romeoâs dad to a big man with a booming, low voice, which made it worse. When Romeo tried to argue with him about how stupid it was that the Capulets and the Montagues were always fighting, it was like watching a pebble bounce off a wall. There was no way in hell Romeo was going to get Juliet. It was the perfect story, as far as I was concerned. All that miseryâthey endured every bit of it just because they couldnât let things go. If they had stripped things down, probably something else would have come along. They would have hurt like hell for a while, but eventually married somebody else and got along fine. But they couldnât do it, so two people died.
Even though everybody knew the story, a lot of people broke down when Romeo drank the poison. Sonnier was more than just a singer; she was a brilliant actress. Her Romeo was so fragile and vulnerable that it was like watching a real person face his moment of death. There were no histrionics, no ham-fisted overacting. She was singing with deadly seriousness, her voice a candle flame in the hall. She was facing the sober realization that there are times when so much has gone wrong that life is no longer worth living. Thatâs the real point of that story, in my opinion. Even when the cost of believing is everything, some people just canât help themselves.
Then it was over. Blu had completely broken down, so I gave her a couple of minutes to collect herself. Most of the crowd was moving back out into the lobby, except for the people like us with the expensive tickets. We were led out a private exit to the parking lot. I led Blu in the dark to the car, and we drove over to the Four Seasons for the reception. It was only fifteen blocks, so we got there in about five minutes. At that point, I did Blu a favor: we didnât valet park. I didnât want to shortchange her, because she looked fantastic. It would have dampened her entrance for everybody to see her climbing out of my dented LeSabre.
We followed the crowd up a big staircase, and I could feel Blu getting excited looking at all the rich guys. They were looking at her, too, I can tell you that. You never saw so many men casually looking over the tops of their drinks in your life. We moved off into the sea of tuxedos and evening gowns.
Everybody is very polite at these kinds of soirees. Theyâre also cliquish, but not necessarily from bad intentions. Itâs more an inevitability. The people in that room were the financial backbone of Atlanta, so they had a lot in common. You could feel it when they greeted each other. A million golf games,
It was a long ways between that opera and where I grew up in Dothan, Alabama. I admit I have no idea what I was supposed to feel, sitting there watching actors in painted faces and Renaissance costumes sing to each other. At first, hearing Romeo sing like a woman was disorienting, but after a while, I started to think about him in a new way. That high voice made him sound like a kid, which is what he was in the real play. For some reason heâs never played by sixteen-year-old boys. Usually thereâs some guy in his twenties or even thirties up on stage. That makes a big difference. Because listening to this high voice come out of Michele Sonnierâs exquisitely fine, delicate face, I started thinking that Romeo was just a victim of the system, powerless and naïve. He wasnât any stronger than Juliet, really, because they were both just children. He was fighting forces a lot bigger than he was, and he didnât even know it. Every time he opened up his mouth you realized right away that he was doomed. They gave the part of Romeoâs dad to a big man with a booming, low voice, which made it worse. When Romeo tried to argue with him about how stupid it was that the Capulets and the Montagues were always fighting, it was like watching a pebble bounce off a wall. There was no way in hell Romeo was going to get Juliet. It was the perfect story, as far as I was concerned. All that miseryâthey endured every bit of it just because they couldnât let things go. If they had stripped things down, probably something else would have come along. They would have hurt like hell for a while, but eventually married somebody else and got along fine. But they couldnât do it, so two people died.
Even though everybody knew the story, a lot of people broke down when Romeo drank the poison. Sonnier was more than just a singer; she was a brilliant actress. Her Romeo was so fragile and vulnerable that it was like watching a real person face his moment of death. There were no histrionics, no ham-fisted overacting. She was singing with deadly seriousness, her voice a candle flame in the hall. She was facing the sober realization that there are times when so much has gone wrong that life is no longer worth living. Thatâs the real point of that story, in my opinion. Even when the cost of believing is everything, some people just canât help themselves.
Then it was over. Blu had completely broken down, so I gave her a couple of minutes to collect herself. Most of the crowd was moving back out into the lobby, except for the people like us with the expensive tickets. We were led out a private exit to the parking lot. I led Blu in the dark to the car, and we drove over to the Four Seasons for the reception. It was only fifteen blocks, so we got there in about five minutes. At that point, I did Blu a favor: we didnât valet park. I didnât want to shortchange her, because she looked fantastic. It would have dampened her entrance for everybody to see her climbing out of my dented LeSabre.
We followed the crowd up a big staircase, and I could feel Blu getting excited looking at all the rich guys. They were looking at her, too, I can tell you that. You never saw so many men casually looking over the tops of their drinks in your life. We moved off into the sea of tuxedos and evening gowns.
Everybody is very polite at these kinds of soirees. Theyâre also cliquish, but not necessarily from bad intentions. Itâs more an inevitability. The people in that room were the financial backbone of Atlanta, so they had a lot in common. You could feel it when they greeted each other. A million golf games,
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