Divamensch

I met my friend Scott Seyforth in the Madison Opera chorus, doing *Faust* in 1998. Scott dug up a couple of photos from that production. In this first one I'm at the arrow on the left, he's at the arrow on the right:

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And in this one he's on the left and I'm on the right:

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He eventually became one of my very best friends, making frequent trips to New York (sometimes multiple times a year), always staying with me.

 

We’re both rabid opera queens and that’s a deep bond. Sometime around the turn of the century we started talking about one day (that seemingly elusive “one day”) doing a European summer opera festival trip. My husband Richard moved to an assisted living facility in March of 2024 and not too long after that I realized that I’d be able to do that trip in August 2025. We started talking about it in earnest and settled on tentative dates in the fall of 2024.

 

Our primary destination was Bayreuth, the Wagner shrine, the theater that Wagner built in rural Bavaria in 1876. I’d been wanting to go there since I first heard about it in the late 90s. My friends John and David told me I was crazy to think I could get tickets because people wait TEN YEARS to get tickets to Bayreuth. Well, according to the website you can try, so I with the help of a German colleague at Tiffany I submitted an order request.

 

The request consists of three or more operas, the dates you want to see them, and the price you want to pay. Also a Plan B, different dates, maybe different operas, different prices, whatever. Scott and I decided (mostly based on dates) on *Tristan und Isolde,* *Lohengrin,* and *Meistersinger*. I submitted our request and waited for the day six weeks later when I would hear from them.

 

As expected, the day arrived and I was told that our request had been declined. But single tickets went on sale a few days later, online, first come first served starting at let’s say 10am New York time on a Sunday morning. I logged in, waited about 45 minutes in a virtual queue, and would you believe I got two tickets for *Tristan.* The seats were in the last row of the top balcony but what did we care. Plus they were only 30 euros.

 

Our *Tristan* tickets were for Sun Aug 10. It would work best for us to start our trip in Bayreuth and go elsewhere from there - - Scott and I naturally weren’t flying all the way to Europe to only see one opera. I asked what he thought of going to Salzburg and he said Oh Yes. I looked online to see what was on their schedule the week we’d be there and asked him what interested him:

 

Weds Aug 13: *Hotel Metamrphosis* (a mashup of readings from Ovid and Vivaldi opera excerpts)

Thurs Aug 14: *Macbeth* (Verdi)

Fri Aug 15: *One Morning Turns Into an Eternity* (a triple bill of Schoenberg, Webern, and Mahler)

Sat Aug 16: *Maria Stuarda* (Donizetti)

 

Scott said, “All four!” So I bought us tickets to all four of those shows, Scott bought our plane tickets, I booked our hotels, and everything fell into place.

 

He came into New York a few days before we left, Weds Aug 6. He stayed with me, natch. We had dinner with our friends John, David, and Karen on Thursday night. John had been to Bayreuth in the 90s and gave us the lowdown on all the weird traditions. More about that later.

 

Here’s a partial list of divas Scott and I discussed in those two days:

 

Tallulah Bankhead

Kitty Carlisle Hart

Carol Channing

Barbara Cook

Marlene Dietrich

Eartha Kitt

Bette Midler

Donna Murphy

Leontyne Price

Beverly Sills

 

No mention of:

 

Patti LuPone

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