It is Opening Day and the fat lady is warming up...

The Boyfriend and I were at Sullivan’s one day, a swank place with live music in the bar and sports on TV.  My attention turned to a sports analyst's dissection of a boxing match on the closest set, complete with animations,  electronic chalk and men spit-sprayin'-passionate about the sport.

"I think boxing is like opera," I said to Joe.  "There are some people who get it and love it and see all the little details in it that make them appreciate the skill. The rest of us just thinks it's  barbaric, stupid and incredibly painful to watch."

He looked at me and said, "That sounds like baseball. "

I think the Boyfriend is onto something.

Think about it. Opera has the great opera houses around the world. The Metropolitan in New York. The soaring Sidney Opera House and the Bolshoi in Moscow.  Baseball has its own domes of drama, Fenway,  Yankee Stadium, Wrigley Field. Miller Park. (You don't think that the sausages running around the bases in Milwaukee aren't yelling at each other in the language of Puccini and Wagner? The bratwurst huffing in German and the Italian sausage emoting in language of Isabella Rossellini? If we listen close enough, we might hear Chorizo sounding uncannily like Rolando Villazon, the famous Mexican tenor.)

Yogi Berra (quoted 90 percent of the time for half of the things he actually said) said "it ain't over 'til the fat lady sings." He is, of course, referring to the Nordic women of Wagner’s Ring Triology with their thick braids and metal breastplates.   But he could have easily been thinking about the protective gear of umpires, especially the old National League which

made them look like Helga with five o’clock shadow. Kommen Sie Heraus! You are outta here!

Operas feature folks with grand egos and are filled with drama.  You can even be a prima donna who is not particularly likable but as long as you can hit a high note and hold it until the rafter shakes and the audience is in tears, then all is forgiven.  Same in baseball. If you are good and can deliver, you still got fans. Think Barry Bonds and Manny Rameriez. Ty Cobb and  Alex Rodriguez.

Tickets are starting to be about the same price for both performances, though they don't let you bring nacho boats into the concert hall.  You do get to preorder your drinks for the intermission at the opera company in my town which I find very civilized, They put your glass of chardonnay out on a cloth covered table with your name written neatly on your receipt. And no one steals it because if you paid that much for a ticket, you can afford your own glass of $8 Chardonnay .  Though I imagine if baseball fans could only order beers between innings and only out in the lobby it would be a madhouse.  We would be back to the boxing match play by play.  I guess my analogy breaks down at some point.

In the old days, opera was really theater for everyone, including the commoners . Like in baseball,  the poorer folks were in the cheap seats shouting "you bum!"  at the big fat guy who really had no chance with the mezzo-soprano but was pouring his heart out anyway.   Audience participation was part of the fun.

Mozart, who wrote the Magic Flute and Don Giovanni, wrote his operas for the common people.  I have to think that if Mozart was alive and a baseball fan, he would be the resident  organist at Wrigley Field. Mozart died without seeing much success in his life, so I have to think he could relate to the Chicago Cubs. Requiem in Nine Innings. Take me out to the ball game and die a slow noisy death.

Because we know that in opera, (SPOILER ALERT) someone always dies.  In Tosca, there are firing squads, betrayal, knifings and a spectacular leap over the side of the castle wall at the end of the performance. Look at last year's season with the Mariners and tell me that all of those things didn't happen? (Well, maybe not the knifing.)  Someone always wins and someone always loses at a baseball game.  If you are a committed fan and your team loses, sometimes it feels like you are the one who fell on the knife, who drank the poison, who got shot through the heart by one you adored but who betrayed you.  And late in the season, you may be tempted to make Faustian deal with the devil to have at least one World Series Championship under your team's belt.

I guess these are acquired tastes that you absorb by being born onto an opera loving family or hanging out with passionate fans who tell you what you are obviously missing.  Baseball, like opera, when it is good, it is very, very good. It leaves you satisfied and contented with the satisfaction of seeing talented people perform a thing of beauty. When opera is bad, it is really, really bad.   When baseball is bad, well, there is always another game  (weather permitting. ) 

Oh, you ask, does The Boyfriend like opera as much as I do?  Barbaric, stupid and incredibly painful to listen to. I did not come up with those words myself.

It is Opening Day. Let the curtain rise and the games begin. Bravo!