1969-? A Taste for Opera

An interest more than a passion. Continue reading

Introduction to opera: It was a very important incident in my life, but I have only the sketchiest memories of the occasion. I am pretty sure that my viewing of the movie The Pad (and How to Use It)1 took place in the TV room in the basement of Allen Rumsey House. The movie was released to theaters on my eighteenth birthday in August of 1966. I am pretty sure that I watched it by myself on Bill Kennedy’s afternoon show. He showed only old movies, and so I am dating this entry as 1969, the year that Kennedy moved his show to channel 50, WKBD. However, it might have been a little earlier, when he was still on CKLW, the powerful station in Windsor, ON.

The movie was based on a play by Peter Shaffer called The Public Ear. In it a guy meets a woman at a symphonic concert ( Mozart’s 40th, as I recall) and invites her to his apartment for supper. I admit that I watched this movie because of the promotions that portrayed it as a sexy comedy. In reality there is no sex at all. Parts of the movie are definitely funny, but the ending is tragic.

This was as racy as it got.`

The guy (played by Brian Bedford), has mistakenly concluded that the woman (Julie Sommars) is an aficionado of “long hair” music. In his “pad”he shows her his sophisticated phonograph system and plays excerpts from Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer and the Humming Chorus from Pucini’s Madama Butterfly.

I was not familiar with either of these works. The Wagnerian selection did not do much for me (and still doesn’t), but I found the Humming Chorus really moving (and still do). The woman, on the other hand, was much more interested in the guy’s neighbor (James Farentino), who had volunteered to cook a romantic supper for them.

This viewing occasioned my purchase of a few vinyl record albums. In those days full operas came in boxed sets of three or more records, which made them pretty expensive. One-disk recordings of the highlights from operas were also available. I purchased one of those for Madama Butterfly, and I really enjoyed it. I also purchased a couple of “greatest hits” albums from famous opera singers such as Renata Tebaldi and John McCormack. I also found some collections dedicated to individual composers. The one that I liked the best contained Rossini’s overtures. I should emphasize that I bought almost all of these records after they had been heavily discounted. I seldom paid more than $2 apiece.

I also frequented the small library of recordings that was available in West Quad. I don’t remember finding anything there that I really liked, but it exposed my ears to some new composers.

I had little or no success in getting any of the other A-R residents to listen to these records. I am not sure that I even tried.

I had no phonograph when I was in training in the army. At my first permanent station, Sandia Base in Albuquerque, I was occasionally able to assemble and conduct a small group of air musicians to accompany my recording of the overture from Rossini’s Guillaume Tell. That was fun. In my final assignment at Seneca Army Depot I finally found a kindred spirit. That experience has been recorded here.


Live performances: Operas have always been expensive. For the first half of my working career my wife Sue and I could seldom afford to purchase opera tickets. After the company became more successful my attitude changed.

The first opera that I ever attended was Verdi’s Aida. In 1981 the Connecticut Opera Company (CO) staged an elaborate production at the home of the Hartford Whalers. I have written about this experience here.

I did not attend another opera until more than a decade later when we went to the Bushnell in Hartford to see a production by the same company of Bizet’s Carmen. Denise Bessette accompanied us. I was interested in the music, Sue wanted a night out, and Denise was hoping to be able to pick up some phrase of the dialogue in French. I do not remember much about the experience. I only recall that we arrived too late to attend the talk that preceded the performance. That put me in a very foul mood. I had purchased a CD of the opera that featured Agnes Baltsa. I was surprised that the performance in Hartford (like every other performance that I have heard or seen) used the recitatives that were added after Bizet’s death.

Willy Anthony Waters.

Sue and I also attended at least one performance before 1999, when Willy Anthony Waters took over as artistic director of the company. I remember watching a very bizarre version of Mozart’s Don Giovanni. For some reason the stage director had women dressed in purple wandering around the stage in nearly every scene. They were supposed to represent Don G’s memories of his previous amorous conquest.

At some point in the early twenty-first century I purchased two season’s tickets to the CO. Each year thereafter I renewed the subscription, and each year my seats and the performances got better (in my opinion). In the last year we were in row F right in the middle. I would not have traded seats with anyone.

The CO put on several performances of three operas per year. I am pretty sure that I was able to attend each opera for the period during which I had season’s tickets. However, I can only remember the details of a few performances.

Jussi performed in Hartford! So did Luciano!
  • I remember a performance of Don Giovanni in which only one set was used. It consisted mostly of doors.
  • There must have been a production of Le Nozze di Figaro, but I remember no details.
  • I am quite sure that I watched a production of Die Zauberflöte by myself between two empty seats. That experience was depicted here.
  • I am sure that I saw Verdi’s La traviata performed in the traditional way with a soprano that I liked a lot. I don’t remember her name. During this show an Italian lady sat next to me. On the other side of her were family members or friends who had purchased the tickets with her in mind. She softly sang along to “Di provenza il mar, il suol”, but she did not seem to think much of the rest of the performance.
  • A year or two later the same soprano starred in a production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. I remember that the program made the strange claim that the only reason to stage this opera was to showcase a new soprano.
  • We definitely saw Richard Strauss’s Salome. It had more dancing than singing and was very short.
  • There was definitely a production of Verdi’s Rigoletto that starred a Black baritone who appeared in several other shows.
  • He was the star of the (rare) presentation of Puccini’s one-act opera, Il tabarro. It was coupled with Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci in which he played Tonio.
  • I have never been that enamored with Puccini’s Tosca. The one that was performed in Hartford had a very unimpressive climax. It was promoted by Mintz and Hoke, the one agency in the Hartford area that never agreed to talk with us.
  • I am pretty sure that one year Pagliacci was paired with its usual partner, Mascagni’s Cavelleria Rusticana.
  • I distinctly remember seeing Humperdinck’s Hansel und Gretel. I did not like it much.
  • We certainly saw a production of Puccini’s La bohème. I also remember seeing photos in the lobby of previous productions. Both Jussi Björling and Luciano Pavarotti starred in this opera in Hartford.
  • Presenting Richard Strauss’s Salome, a short opera with no memorable arias, was a strange choice. The big attractions were the dance of the seven veils and John the Baptist’s head on a silver platter.
  • I vaguely remember a production of Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia.
  • One of the last operas that we saw was definitely the best, or at least the most surprisingly good. I went to see Rossini’s La cenerentola with low expectations, but I left with a real appreciation for what this company was able to do before its sudden demise.

The last season for the CO was 2008-2009. I attended the presentation of Don Giovanni in the fall of 2008. The attendance in Hartford was pretty good, but evidently the one performance in New Haven bombed. In February of 2009 the company abruptly shut down without refunding tickets already purchased. However, I had paid for three sets of two tickets using American Express, which refunded me the total cost of the tickets, including the portion for the one that we had attended.

I was shocked and very sad to hear about the OC’s demise. I enjoyed every aspect of attending operas at the Bushnell. By this time I was more than just appreciative of opera. Although the list of composers whom I did not like was fairly long, I really could hardly tolerate other forms of music. They seemed trivial by comparison.

In August Sue and I would sometimes drive to Cooperstown, NY, stay overnight at a horrendously overpriced hotel, and attend one or two performances in the beautiful Alice Bush Opera Theater. The theater was a very nice place to watch a show, but it had a tin roof. Those inside could really hear it when it started to rain. It also lacked air conditioning, but it was never intolerably hot.

I remember watching Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Jenůfa by Leoš Janáček, and Verdi’s attempt at comedy. Il regno di un giorno, There were probably others. I think that the last performance that we saw was Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man, which starred baritone Dwayne Croft, whom I had heard many times on broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera. His performance did not make anyone forget Robert Preston.

Sue and I also went to a couple of performances by traveling companies. We saw Carmen performed twice by foreign companies, once in Storrs and once (I think) in Amherst. We also attended a low-budget version of Figaro in Springfield, MA. After I had seen these “war horses” several times I no longer went out of my way to see them.

Sue and I also attended a couple of operas when we were on trips in Europe. We saw Donizetti’s Don Pasquale in Rome as described here on p. 65. We also got to see an entertaining version of Figaro in Prague, as is described here. You can also read here about my adventure in Vienna that was capped off by a performance of the same opera.

Sue and I attended two operas in Pittsfield, MA, La bohème and Figaro. Both included a world class diva, Maureen O’Flynn, and both were extremely professional and entertaining. They were shown in and old-time movie house in downtown Pittsfield. Unfortunately the Berkshire Opera went out of business shortly thereafter.

In 2001 Denise Bessette and I witnessed a performance of Il trovatore in San Diego. That experience has been documented here. In 2006 Sue and I also spent a week in San Diego. On one evening we attended a performance of Carmen in the same theater. I also wrote about that vacation and posted it here.

I attended one opera on a business trip. It was in 2008, and the the client was Lord & Taylor. I walked from the hotel in which I was staying in Manhattan to Lincoln Center to watch a performance of La traviata by the Metropolitan Opera. That aspect of my relationship with L&T has been posted here.


Class: A guy named Mike Cascia2 gave presentations at the Enfield Public Library the week before the Live in HD performances shown at the local Cinemark. I attended a few of these. He also taught classes in opera for the continuing education program conducted by the Enfield public schools. I never enrolled in any of them because they conflicted with the Italian classes that I attended

Mike had a very impressive set of recordings. He played quite a few selections from each of the operas that he covered. However, his presentations did not, at least in the classes that I attended, provide a great deal of insight.

I also saw Mike at the Cinemark at Enfield Square mall a few times. He always sat in the first row behind the horizontal aisle, and so I was four or five rows behind him.


Recordings: In the early nineties I purchased a Sony Walkman so that I could listen to tapes while I was jogging. My cars for that period, the Saturn and my first Honda, also had cassette players. I discovered that Circuit City had a large selection of inexpensive cassette tapes of classical music. I bought a fairly large number of them, mostly just to find out what I liked. They were discarded long ago. I remember that I had samplings of many composers, including opera composers. I also somehow obtained a recording of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.

I also bought from The Teaching Company3.several sets of opera courses conducted by Robert Greenberg4. The details are explained below. I really enjoyed listening to these courses, which covered in some detail a few operas and the backgrounds of the composers. The most astounding thing that I learned was that Tchaikovsky was coerced into committing suicide so that his sexual orientation was never made public.

I bought several CDs as well, including the following full-length operas:

Georges Bizet opera: Carmen with Agnes Baltsa and José Carreras. I once listened to this recording, which has dialogue rather than recitative, a lot. That, however, was before I discovered the recording on YouTube in which Maria Callas sings Carmen.

Sutherland and Pavarotti.

Donizetti opera: Pavarotti and Sutherland are wonderful in Lucia di Lammermoor. The quality of the YouTube recording is inferior, but the performances by Callas and Giuseppe di Stefano are the stuff of legend.

Four Mozart Operas:

  • Figaro conducted by Sir Georg Solti with Sam Ramey (from Wichita, KS) in the title role. This was one of the greatest opera recordings ever. The cast included Kiri Te Kanawa, Lucia Popp, Frederica Von Stade, and Thomas Allen. It also included the arias in the last act by Marcellina and Don Basilio that were almost always left out of live productions. I remembered listened to this recording as I was hiking by myself in the Dolemites in 2003, as described on page 18 of this posting.
  • Don Giovanni conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini featuring Eberhardt Wachter, Joan Sutherland, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, and Giuseppe Taddei. I have listened to and watched a large number of performances of this opera, and none measured up to this one.
  • Die Zauberflöte conducted by Sir Neville Marriner. Ramey and Te Kanawa also perform in this recording.
  • Così fan tutte One of the three disks was in the portable CD player that I left at an airport. I was too cheap to replace something of which I already possessed 2/3 of the contents. Te Kanawa shines on this recording, too. I once heard her say that there was no room for error with Mozart. She said that she always strove to hit the middle of each note.

Three Puccini Operas:

  • La Bohème with Jussi Björling and Victoria de los Angeles. For some reason it is not in stereo, a fact that I did not realize until I played it.
  • Tosca with Renata Scotto and Plácido Domingo. I am not crazy about this opera, but you can’t beat this performance.
  • Turandot would have been Puccini’s best opera if he had finished it5. I never tired of listening to Pavarotti and Sutherland. Luciano never incorrectly answered any of the riddles. I often have stopped listening after Liu’s aria. The rest of the opera was written by Franco Alfano after Puccini’s death.

Two Rossini operas:

  • My copy of Il barbiere di Siviglia featured Domingo (a tenor) in the baritone role of Figaro. He handled it easily. Kathleen Battle is superb as Rosina.
  • Agnes Baltsa played the title character in my recording of L’italiana in Algeri. I bought this before attending a performance of it so that I would have some familiarity with it.

Three Verdi Operas:

  • You haven’t heard La traviata until you hear Pavarotti and Sutherland.
  • The version of Rigoletto that is in my collection features Domingo as the count. This is the only set that I have that did not come with a box and a booklet containing the libretto.
  • James Levine discouraged Domingo’s ambition to sing Otello for several years. I had a recording of their ultimate collaboration. Renata Scotto sang the Desdemona (which in Italian is pronounced dehz DAY mo nah) role.

Cav/Pag: I bought two recordings of the one-act operas that are often paired in performances, Cavalleria Rusticana by Pietro Mascagni and Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo. The one that features Callas and Di Stefano was recorded in the fifties. The technology for the other one, with Pavarotti and a pair of excellent female vocalists, is several decades newer. I prefer Pavarotti and Mirella Freni in Pagliacci, but Callas’s performance of Santuzza (which she never sang on stage) in Cavalleria is unforgettable. It ruined the opera for me whenever anyone else attempted it.

Singles: I purchased a dozen or so individual CDs. Most of them were collections of arias by various artists, including sets of Verdi arias by Callas by Andrea Bocelli. My best individual CD was probably the highlights from Aida with Leontyne Price and Domingo.

I downloaded some software that allowed me to make MP3 files out of all of my CD’s. I am not sure that I even had a CD player in 2024 when I wrote this entry.


Radio: From the eighties until the time that TSI closed in 2014 I worked at the office nearly every weekend. I often listened to two shows early in the afternoons, the Metropolitan Opera broadcast on Saturdays on WAMC from Albany6 and Sunday Afternoon at the Opera with Rob Meehan on WWUH, the radio station of the University of Hartford.

For many decades the Met broadcast its Saturday matinees live on public radio. The performances were mostly from the standard repertoire supplemented with a few new operas commissioned by the company. The singers and the production values were almost always first rate.

One of my favorite parts was the Opera Quiz that was held during intermissions. When I first started listening, my favorite participant was Fr. Owen Lee, who was an enthusiast of Wagner’s music, but not his politics.

Willy Anthony Waters from the Connecticut Opera often appeared on that program. I remember that he challenged listeners to name the character from La bohème who appeared in another Puccini opera. I never discovered the answer to this question, and it has bugged me for decades. La rondine and Manon Lescaut are also set in Paris, but I could not identify the two-timing character.

In order to enjoy the performances more I purchased a Bose Wave Radio, which remained in my office until TSI was shut down. I still had it in 2024, but I hardly ever used it in the last decade. For the most part streaming supplanted radio listening for me.

Rob Meehan in 1980.

During the months in which the Met was not transmitting, WAMC played recordings of operas from other famous opera houses, primarily San Francisco.

Meehan’s show was quite different. It featured his huge collection of opera recordings, some of which were very obscure. Occasionally I had to turn his show off because the music made my ears bleed.


Met Live in HD: In 2006 the Met began transmitting HD recordings of its matinees live to theaters around the world that were capable of showing them. This was a terrific way to allow people who did not live close to a company that staged operas to see and hear the very best presentations. The Met also showed encore presentations on the following Wednesdays, originally in the evening and currently in the afternoon. They also showed repeats of three or four previous operas during the summer months.

Here are some of the operas that I seem to remember seeing at the theater. I may have actually watched a few on my computer when I subscribed to Met Opera on Demand, as listed in a lower section.

Kristine Opolais filled in with only twenty-four hours of notice and gave a great performance as Mimi in La bohème.
  • I have watched at least two productions of Rigoletto. The first one was an update to the rat-pack days in Las Vegas. The one shown in 2022 was also modernized, but the most striking thing about it was that Gilda was portrayed by Rosa Feola as a mature woman. That part worked fine, but the problem with moving the opera away from Italy is that the “Maledizione!” declaration that links the first act with the last just doesn’t ring true at all.
  • James Levine’s conducting of Verdi’s Falstaff was the last of a trio of “great comedies” that he conducted in the teens. It featured Ambrogio Maestri in the title role. The Met’s HD presentations always feature live interviews with the performers. Maestri gave a cooking demonstration. Since he did not speak English, his wife translated. I did not enjoy this opera much at all, and I cannot imagine how Levine could think that it was better than Il barbiere di Sivigla or L’elisir d’amore or several other works.
  • I enjoyed the 2012 production of Verdi’s Otello featuring S. African tenor Johan Botha, whom I had never heard before, and Renée Fleming, who was, of course, perfect. Botha and tenor Falk Struckmann both had previously specialized in the works of Wagner. In an interview Struckmann said that he had great admiration for the abilities of Bel Canto tenors.
  • The new opera, Marnie, which was shown in 2018. It starred Isabel Leonard, whom I have enjoyed greatly in other operas. I did not however, think much of this one. Why the composer made an important character in a modern opera a countertenor escaped me.
  • The Exterminating Angel was supposed to be a nightmare, and it definitely was. It did feature the highest note, which sounded like a honk, ever sung on the Met’s stage.
  • I was surprised at how dark Jules Massenet’s opera, Werther, was. I watched it mainly to see Jonas Kaufmann, but I liked the music enough to watch several additional operas by Massenet.
  • I was not familiar with Francesco Cliea’s Adriana Lacouvreur until I saw the performance with Ana Netrebko and Anita Rachvelishvili. They both were good, but I was really impressed by Rachvelishvili.
  • I liked Massenet’s music in Cendrillon, and I especially appreciated Joyce DiDonato (of Prairie Village, KS!) as Cinderalla. I found the production, which I viewed in 2018, a little contrived.
  • The Met showed Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci together in 2015. I think that I must have seen the summer encore a few years later. I liked the updated Pagliacci, but CR did nothing for me. I kept comparing it with Callas’s rendition of the Santuzza role on my CD, and it came up very short. The entire story takes place in the piazza of a church in Sicily. I see no reason to stage it on the carousel. The dancing was an unwanted (by me at least) distraction.
  • I am quite sure that I saw the version of Hector Berlioz’s grand opera Les Troyens that was shown in Enfield in January of 2023. I remember that someone in the audience complained about Deborah Voigt’s performance as Cassandra. I thought that she was OK, but I had nothing for comparison. I recall that I was sure that Fr. Puricelli would have approved of Susan Graham as Dido.
  • I remember virtually nothing about watching Verdi’s Ernani in 2012 except that the man later known as Emperor Charles V was a central character.
  • Hvorostovsky also played the title role in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. I enjoyed Renée Fleming’s Tatiana much more. I absolutely hated the stark production. I had been spoiled by the wonderful YouTube video mentioned below.
  • I also watched Domingo in The Queen of Spades I found it depressing and tiresome. I had missed out on an opportunity to view a performance of this opera in Budapest in 2007. That misadventure has been described here.
  • I saw Faust, composed by Charles Gounod, in Enfield in 2011. I watched his Roméo et Juliette in Lowell, MA, in the middle of a bridge tournament. In both cases I was by myself. I did not really like either opera very much. Since those are the only operas of his that are ever performed, I have concluded that I do not like Gounod’s operas very much.
  • I might have watched Roberto Alagna’s performance in Samson et Delila on the computer, but I think that I saw the HD telecast in the theater in 2018. Alagna’s listed height was 5’8″, and his costar Elīna Garanča claimed to be 5’7″. She certainly appeared to be at least as tall as he was, and it was difficult to imagine Alagna tearing down the temple with his bare hands. Still, Camille Saint-Saëns’s music was enjoyable, and the performances by both leads were impressive.
  • I had purchased a record album of highlights of Umberto Giordano’s Andrea Chenier in the sixties or seventies. I never saw that opera until I watched the Met on Demand version during the pandemic. In 2023 I went to the theater to watch Giordano’s less familiar Fedora with Sonya Yoncheva and Piotr Beczała. I enjoyed it immensely.
  • I had seen the same two stars (along with Domingo in a baritone role) in Verdi’s Luisa Miller in 2018. I had never heard even one aria from the opera before that occasion. I don’t know how I missed it. The Met’s performance was very good. The only thing that I found hard to take were the duets by the two basses.
  • Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow is an operetta, not an opera. I only watched it in a summer rerun of the 2015 performance because Fleming sang the title role. She was great, but the story was tiresome.
  • I decided to attend Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in 2014 primarily because I had heard that it was Fr. Owen’s favorite opera. It was also conducted by Levine as part of his trilogy of great comedies. The third reason was to hear Botha in an opera. I enjoyed it, which I cannot say about any other Wagnerian opera that I have seen or heard.
  • If the Met showed a Puccini opera, I went. In 2014. Sue and I saw Kristine Opolais fill in for the artist scheduled to play Mimi in La bohème on 24 hours notice. I liked her performance, and I really liked the staging by Franco Zefferelli. I appreciated that Opolais was thin enough to pass as a victim of consumption. I went back to see her in the puppet production of Madama Butterfly and a traditional Manon Lescaut. In the latter she kept taking her shoes off in every scene that included her costar, Roberto Alagna, who was reportedly the same height but appeared considerably shorter even in his lifts.
  • I don’t think that I ever got to see Zefferelli’s production of Tosca, but Sue and I did attend the presentation of La fanciulla del West in 2018 with Kaufmann and Eva-Maria Westbroek. We both enjoyed it immensely. I could easily understand why Puccini considered it his best opera. The Met’s production actually included a brawl in the saloon.
  • One of the very few modern operas that I really liked was Nixon in China by John Adams. I saw it in 2011 with James Maddalena in the title role. Parts of it, especially the parts that included Henry Kissinger, who was portrayed as a clownish figure.
  • I came late to Vincenzo Bellini’s operas. The first one that I saw on the screen was Norma, which the Met showed in 2017. It starred two of my all-time favorite performers, Sondra Radvanovsky and Joyce DiDonato. It was an amazing performance of beautiful music and a pretty good story. It caused me to search for performances of the other three famous Bellini operas.
  • When Sue and I went to Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier in 2017 there was a problem with the transmission or perhaps with the equipment. We got to see most of the part of the opera that I was most interested in, namely Fleming’s performance as the Marchelin. The theater gave each person in the audience a voucher that was sufficient to pay for another performance. We used them for a different opera. I later watched the entire performance of this one using Met on Demand.
  • Nobody thinks that Roberto Devereux is Donizetti’s best work. Met on Demand has no audio recordings of the work and only one video. I doubt that there will be another any time soon. Sondra Radvanovsky game such a memorable performance in 2016 that no one is likely to want to undertake the role for decades to come. For some reason her renditions of the other two queens that year, Anna Bolena and Maria Stuarda were not selected for Live in HD. I had to watch performances by others on Met on Demand.
  • I absolutely hated the production of Verdi’s La traviata that the Met staged in 2012. For some bizarre reason a big clock was in the middle of the stage and a bright red couch that was carried around. However, there was one saving grace, the absolutely brilliant performance by Natalie Dessay as Violetta. It caused me to seek out her other performances on Met on Demand and YouTube.
  • Levine’s 2014 version of Mozart’s Figaro was updated to the Roaring Twenties, and it worked marvelously. This was the third of his Levine’s comedic trilogy. The entire cast was good, but Marlis Petersen stole the show with her phenomenal interpretation of Susanna. I was so impressed that I made myself watch her in her famous role as the focal character in Lulu.
  • I saw the live version of Don Giovanni in 2023. The title character (and nearly everyone else) was a gun-toting gangster. I hated the production, but the singing was good.
  • The production of Massenet’s Manon that was screened in 2019 may have exceeded my expectations more than any other. Lisette Oropesa was absolutely outstanding in the title role, and the production was superb. I had seen her in several smaller roles before in Werther and Rigoletto, but she just knocked me out in this one.
  • I did not think that I would like the updated version of George Frideric Handel’s story of Nero’s mother, Agrippina. However, there were a lot of good reviews. I found the whole thing silly, and I must conclude that I just don’t like baroque opera.
  • I had low expectations for Akhnaten, by Philip Glass, as well. I am sorry, but I cannot stand listening to a countertenor for nearly three hours.
  • The latest version of Lucia was set in Detroit in the twentieth century. It did not work. The character of the priest is critically important in this opera, and it made no sense in a drug-infested Detroit neighborhood. The tattoos did not help. Javier Camarena nearly saved this disastrous production with Edgardo’s arias in the last act.
  • I hoped to see George Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess when it was show in 2020 just before the .pandemic hit A few years later it was shown as a summer encore, and I went. The singing was fine, but the story was embarrassing. If this was a great American opera, it says a lot about American opera.
  • It is doubtful that anyone will attempt to put on Luigi Cherubini’s Medea again in my lifetime. Nobody had attempted it since Maria Callas, and no one could hope to match Radvanovsky’s stunning portrayal in 2022. We can only hope that she finds a few more plum roles before retiring.
  • Verdi’s La forza del destino was once part of the Met’s standard repertoire. The Polish production that Sue and I drove to Buckland Hills in 2024 to watch attempted to update it to the twentieth century. Parts of this approach worked; parts of it did not. What really upset me was that important aspects of key arias were (presumably deliberately) mistranslated.7 However, it was still worth the cost of admission to listen to the fantastic singers, the orchestra, and, more than anything, the chorus. I always have hated Peter Gelb’s idea that current audiences cannot appreciate the historical background of the original story. It certainly requires a little education to enhance appreciation of the traditional presentations, but if it takes something like this to get some outstanding operas back on the stage I am for it. By the way, this production included the worst knife fight that has not yet appeared on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
The Met used this shot from the worst scene in the opera to promote the telecast.
  • On April 24, 2024, I canceled my bridge game with Eric Vogel so that Sue and I could drive to Buckland Hills to see Puccini’s La rondine with Angel Blue and Jonathan Tetelman, who, according to Gelb, had to make his Met debut with allergy problems. I just love this opera, and they, the other principals, Emily Pogorelc and tenor Bekhzod Davronov, the orchestra, dancers, and chorus definitely did it justice. Tetelman will surely be an international star if he was not already. He has a fine voice, is a good actor, and is 6’4″. A tenor! The only cringy part was when Blue and Tetelman were obviously uncomfortable dancing in the second act. After the women of the dance troupe had been flung around on the stage, the timid swaying of the stars seemed out of place. I was also a little put off by the problems that Blue’s appearance created. The maid, who was certainly less than half her size borrowed her clothes, and Ruggero failed to recognize her after meeting her in a group where she certainly stood out for her size and complexion. On the other hand, Pogoreld and Davronov were delightful, and a special treat was the analysis of the score by conductor Speranza Scapucci during the intermission.

Video Recordings: I subscribed to the Met on Demand service before the pandemic. This allowed me to watch some of the large number of operas recorded by the Met while I was walking on the treadmill. I set my laptop up on top of a cabinet that Sue once used to hold shoes. I then started plugged in my earphones, started the opera and then turned on the treadmill. Here are some of them that I remember watching.

Pavarotti, a harpist, and Guleghina.
  • I definitely watched the 1996 rendition of Andrea Chénier that featured Luciano Pavarotti in the title role. It was perfect for his “park and bark” style of acting. I was also quite taken with Maria Guleghina’s performance. I had never heard of her.
  • I also enjoyed Guleghina’s performance in Verdi’s Nabucco, which I had never gotten around to seeing. I think that she was wearing the same wig that she used in Andrea Chénier. I wasn’t crazy about the opera in general.
  • I guess that I must have seen Bellini’s I puritani with superstar Anna Netrebko, but I don’t remember much about it. I have never thought much of Netrebko’s acting prowess. However, her performance in Francesco Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur was fairly impressive. She insisted that her interview be conducted before the day of the opera because, she said, she wanted to concentrate on her singing.
  • I liked the other Bellini opera a great deal more. La sonnambula starred my favorite soprano, Dessay, and the champion tenor of the Del Canto world, Juan Diego Flórez. The attempt to update the story to the twenty-first century did not work at all, but it was still better than nothing. The story depends upon the notion that an entire town would be unfamiliar with the concept of sleep-walking. This premise seemed even less valid in the updated version.
  • I also watched the same pair in a traditional rendition of Donizetti’s La fille du régiment with the same stars. Dessay was outstanding, and Flórez was given an encore to showcase his rendition of a string of high C’s.
  • Flórez was much less successful in the 2018 production of La traviata. He just did not seem right for the dramatic role of Alfredo.
  • I was surprised to discover that Teresa Stratas played Marie Antoinette in John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles. I did not recognize her. A young Fleming was also in this production, but Marilyn Horne stole the show as the exotic entertainer Samira.
  • As I mentioned above. I was able to view the rest of Der Rosenkavalier on my laptop.
  • I watched the Met’s 1979 production of The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, written by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. Don’t ask me to explain it. I think that this was the show that made me a fan of Teresa Stratas.
  • Fleming made Antonín Dvořák’s Rusalka an enduring part of the Met’s repertoire. It did not exactly showcase her skills. She was mute during one entire act. I am pretty sure that I also watched the Opelais rendition of this opera, either at the cinema or at home.
  • Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo ed Eurydice was very short. There was not a single break. I was familiar with the famous aria “Che faro senza Euridice?” from my recording of arias sung by Maria Callas. The star in the Met production, Stephanie Blythe, was a virtually unknown mezzo, who reminded no one of Callas. It was a big disappointment.
  • For some reason the Met decided to record Joyce DiDonato’s rendition of Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda in 2013 rather than Radvanovsky’s in 2016. I like DiDonato a lot, but I would have liked to see what Radvanovsky did with the role. Likewise I wish that Radvanovsky’s portrayal of the title character in Anna Bolena had been recorded.
  • Marlis Petersen was fabulous as the central character in Alban Berg’s Lulu, but nothing would make me listen to another Berg opera.
  • Watching Natalie Dessay in Lucia was a big treat for me, even though it was that horrible production with the giant clock. She claimed in the interview that she had missed a note in the mad scene, but I doubt that anyone noticed.
  • She also starred in the 2003 production of Richard Strauss’s fantasy, Ariadne auf Naxos. I found it weird (twenty-foot tall women) but enjoyable. I probably would enjoy anything that she was in.
  • I thought that I might like Wagner’s Parsifal, if only because it starred Jonas Kaufman and René Pape. It also featured the so-called Lance of Longinus, which I was quite interested in. I was wrong. It was unbearably long and, in my opinion, just silly.
  • I did not think much of the 1989 telecast of Bluebeard’s Castle either. I have enjoyed other works of Béla Bartók, but I think that this one deserves its obscurity.
  • The Met has three videos of Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera. I watched the film of the oldest one that starred Pavarotti. It used the Boston version in a production that I could barely tolerate. I did not realize until I researched this that the Swedish version was shown in 2012, and it included Radvanovsky. I have put it on my bucket list.
  • I was disappointed with Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra. It had two things going for it. The doge actually wore that peculiar crown, and the female lead was Kiri Te Kanawa. The story, however, did not keep my interest.

A large number of video files of full-length operas have been uploaded to YouTube. I have watched quite a few of them. I have also used some software that I downloaded to make MP3 files out of dozens of operas. I have listened to them on a tiny MP3 player that I carry with me while walking as well as in my 2018 Honda, which can play MP3 files stored on flash drives.

Here are some of the YouTube videos that I could stand to watch from start to finish. In many cases I started and gave up on operas in which either the video quality was bad or the production was bad.

  • By far the best one that I watched was Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore performed in 2005 at the Vienna State Opera House. The stars were Rolando Villazón and Netrebko. She was OK, but he was unbelievably good. I often listen to his rendition of “Una furtiva lagrima“, for which he was allowed an encore. You can watch it here.
  • The second-best one was also fantastic. “Best Tosca Ever”, a film shot in 1976 featured virtuoso performances by Domingo, Raina Kabaivanska, and Sherril Milnes. The real star, however was the production. which was somehow shot in authentic locations—the church of Sant’ Andrea della Valle, Palazzo Farnese, and the roof of Castel Sant’Angelo. The video has been posted here.
  • Number 3 for me was the version of Eugene Onegin that was televised at the New Year’s Music Festival in 2014. This one does not have famous names as performers. In fact it has Russian singers for most roles and separate actors who were lip-synching. For me the most outstanding performances were Michel Sinéchal as Monsieur Triquet and the fantastic John Aldis Choir. The film lasts less than two hours, which meant that parts of the original score has been cut, but that did not bother me much. What was left told the story in a remarkably effective way, as you can witness here.
  • One of the comments written by a viewer of the Eugene Onegin film led me to discover Cherevichki, the comic fantasy written by Tchaikovsky about Christmas in the Ukraine. When I first sought a recording on YouTube, the only one available was a video of a concert performance. Later an audio recording of Russian singers was added. I have listened to it dozens of times while I was out walking. The tenor is exceptionally good. I later discovered the existence of an obscure DVD of a performance of Cherevichki at Covent Garden. The singers on the DVD are not as good as the ones on that album, but the finale is great.
  • I am sure that I watched one of the recordings of Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes, but I don’t remember much about it. I think that it might have been the BBC telecast.
  • I really enjoyed Ramey in the 1987 production of Don Giovanni that can be watched here. It is the only one that I have seen or heard that measures up to the one on my CD.
  • I also enjoyed watching Te Kanawa at the Glyndenbourne Festival production of 1973. Dame Kiri herself posted it here so that you could see it.
  • I am almost positive that I saw a British film of Verdi’s Macbeth on YouTube that starred a black woman as Lady Macbeth. When I researched this entry I could not find it. It was striking, but I did not enjoy the music much, and the filming was very grainy.
  • Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fidelio did nothing for me. The plot seemed preposterous to me, and none of the music was memorable. At the Met’s previous home Beethoven was one of the few opera composers memorialized in an exhibit. In retrospect this seemed ridiculous. He only wrote one opera, and it was seldom performed.
  • Puccini’s La rondine has become one of my favorite operas. At first there was only one video with English subtitles. It was posted by a Russian woman who starred in it. Her Italian pronunciation was horrible. She even got her lover’s name wrong. The second version that I saw got the ending wrong! They had Magda walking into the sea. I wanted to watch the Angela Gheorghiu version, but the captions were in Japanese. I did find a wonderful recording of the entire opera that featured Anna Moffo and Daniele Barioni. You can listen to it here.
  • I was disappointed with the production of Massenet’s Le Cid with Domingo. I can understand why it is not part of the standard repertoire. I dimly remember the movie with Charlton Heston. At the time I had no idea of the historical context.
  • Alexander Borodin’s opera Prince Igor is not often performed. When it is, the part that everyone is interested in is the ballet known as The Polovtsian Dances. The performance at the Bolshoi Theater that was posted to YouTube (here) is the only ballet that I have ever seen that I considered worth watching.
  • My fondness for Natalie Dessay was put to the test by the version of Jacques Offenbach’s insufferable Les contes d’Hoffmann. I skipped to Dessay’s section and quit when it was completed.
  • My recording of arias sung by Maria Callas included one from Gluck’s opera Alceste. I forced myself to watch a production on YouTube. I did not like it at all.

Tom Rollins was voted the greatest intercollegiate debater of the seventies

Recorded Lectures: The Teaching Company was founded by a great debater named Tom Rollins. I watched him in an elimination round one. It was something to behold.

His company contracted with academics from around the world to produce recordings of series of lectures about specific topics. The professor that he signed up to explain the world of symphonic and operatic works was Robert Greenberg. Each course came in several book-sized boxes that contained a number of magnetic tapes8 and booklets that were less than transcripts but more than outlines. The format provided a good way to learn, at least for me. The prices were very high, but the company often had sales. I paid between $20 and $30 for each course. I found four of these courses on the shelves in the basement.

  • The first course that I purchased were How to Listen to and Understand Great Music. Its forty-eight (!) lectures were organized chronologically. So, it was essentially a history of western concert music. A list of the titles of the lectures can be found here. Greenberg included musical samples of many of the periods. I don’t remember much of this but I do recall that the sonata-allegro form and explained that it was derived from the structures of three- and four-act operas. He also presented a great deal of historical information about various composers. The most striking story was the dastardly tale of how Tchaikovsky’s contemporaries coerced him into committing suicide rather than reveal his sexual orientation to the public. The other amazing revelation concerned how productive Mozart’s career was even though he died at the age of 35. Greenberg said that the best way to think of it was that Mozart was twenty years old when he was born, and he was therefore a productive composer from the age of twenty-five through his death at fifty-five.
  • Concert Masterworks contained less history and more details of compositions. Included were piano concertos from Mozart and Beethoven. A major part of the differences between the two styles was accounted for by the presence of much better pianos after Mozart’s death. There were several lectures on Dvořák’s ninth symphony, which I really liked. I preferred Beethoven’s violin concerto to Johannes Brahms’. In fact, I don’t think that the work of Brahms has held up at all. The last two composers were Felix Mendelssohn, a child prodigy who seemed to burn out in middle age, and Franz Liszt, who was a genuine rock star.
  • My favorite course was How to Listen to and Understand Opera, a subject that had haunted me since my college days. I learned in this course that the ancient Greeks apparently had what we would consider as opera, but the technique of combining music with plays was lost for centuries. A small group of men in Florence (including Galileo’s father) in the early Renaissance resolved to bring it back. Claudio Monteverdi’s9 L’Orfeo was still being performed in 2024. I learned about recitative (or recitativo in Italian)10, which refers dialogue that was sung at a conversational pace. Greenberg contrasted Mozart’s ponderous opera seria, Idomeneo, with his comic masterpiece, Figaro. He also played and discussed Il barbiere di Siviglia, Otello, Carmen, Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, Salome, and Tosca.
  • The twenty-four lectures of The Operas of Mozart inspired me greatly. They brought the young genius to life in my mind and also explored the details of Così fan tutte, Figaro, and Don Giovanni. I was quite surprised to learn about the Masonic elements of Die Zauberflöte, which technically was a singspiel, not an opera. It contained a great deal of dialogue.
Robert Greenberg

During the pandemic I purchased one more course, Understanding the Fundamentals of Music. These lectures, which catalogued the various elements of musical composition came on CD’s. Although Greenberg considered them his most satisfying set of lectures, they did not enhance my appreciation much. For example, I still could not recognize key changes.


Books: I found six books about opera on the shelves in my office. Several of them were gifts from people who knew that I liked opera.

  • The one that I have consulted the most is John W. Freeman’s Stories of the Great Operas. It has short histories and synopses of 150 operas that have been performed the most often. My only objection is that it included the laughable Boston version of Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera.
  • Johanna Fiedler’s Molto Agitato was an entertaining read. It included a lot of gossip about Kathleen Battle’s off-stage shenanigans.
  • Jacques Chailley’s The Magic Flue Explained provided a lot of details about the Masonic influences in Mozart’s masterpiece.
  • Italian for the Opera by Robert Stuart Thomson was something of a disappointment. It explained a few things that had puzzled me, but it hardly helped me to listen more attentively at all.
  • The A to Z of Opera has synopses and short histories of hundreds of operas, many quite obscure. I had forgotten that this book came with a CD set that I had not played for decades.
  • I likewise had no recollection whatever of a short book called Quotable Opera. It was a collection of quotes by and/or about people involved in opera. I must have gotten to page 48 at some point. That is where I found a bookmark. My favorite quotes were both about Wagner. Mark Twain quoted Bill Nye, the humorist from Wyoming, as saying, “I have been told Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.” Rossini opined that, “Wagner has some beautiful moments but terrible quarter-hours”

Miscellany: I discovered while doing this entry that Google capitalizes every major word in German and English operas. However, it only capitalizes proper nouns in Italian and French operas. I never discovered the reason for this discrimination, but I followed the same rules in this entry.

I did not mention in the YouTube section the recording that I listen to the most. It has fifty arias performed by Maria Callas.


1. The movie has apparently disappeared. As far as I can tell, the two images displayed here are the only traces of it on the Internet. I have found no recordings in any format. Its IMDB site is here. Presumably if recordings are located, they will be listed there.

2. Mike Cascia died in June of 2020. His LinkeIn page says that he worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston until 2008. His obituary, which detailed his efforts to promote opera, has been posted here.

3. The Teaching Company was founded by Tom Rollins, whom I knew of as a legendary debater. I only got to see him in action once, but It was an awesome experience. He was extraordinarily talented. He later was chief counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Relations. The company was sold in 2006 and now operates as Wondrium and The Great Courses. Tom’s LinkedIn page can be found here.

4. For several years Robert Greenberg had an arrangement with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. He supplied the lecture; the orchestral provided the music. Sue and I attendedseveral of these performances. His webpage is here.

5. Puccini could not think of an ending to the story that work. I think that I could write a good one, but it would require rewriting at least one of the trios by Ping, Pang, and Pong. It would also require staging a murder by an arrow that appeared to be shot from a bow. That could be done, right?

6. Because of its powerful transmitter located on Mt. Greylock in the Berkshires, the reception of WAMC in Rockville, Enfield, and East Windsor was much better than that of WNPR, the local public radio affiliate.

7. In Don Alvaro’s primary aria, in which he provides the motivation for his character, he says the following (in Italian):

My father wished to shatter the foreign yoke
on his native land, and by uniting himself
with the last of the Incas, thought to assume
the crown. The attempt was in vain!
I was born in prison, educated
in the desert; I live only because my royal birth
is known to none! My parents
dreamed of a throne; the axe awakened them!

I could not locate a transcript of what was in the captioning at this performance. It certainly was nothing like the above. For me the acid test of a novel production is whether its captioning needs to lie about what the characters were actually singing. Incidentally, the word “last” in the third line is feminine Italian (“ultima”). So, in the original version Don Alvaro’s father married the last surviving Inca woman. So, the “forza del destino” driving Alvaro. The forces driving Carlo are family pride, racism, and Church-sanctioned colonialism. This version muddles all of this in favor of blaming everything on war.

8. During the period in which this transpired I had a Walkman and a cassette player in the Saturn and my first Honda.

9. Monteverdi in Italian means “green mountain”. Greenberg in German means the same thing.

10. Greenberg used the Italian term “recitativo”, but he pronounced the “c” like an “s”, as it would be pronounced in French. He mispronounced numerous other Italian words.

1967-1969 Part 3A: Events at Allen Rumsey House

The middle years in Allen Rumsey House. Continue reading

I remember reading somewhere that James Earl Jones lived in Allen Rumsey House when he was at U-M. I don’t know whether he enjoyed it, but it really suited me. I never considered moving out.

Mimeo

The House Council: I was asked to serve as secretary for the House Council fairly early in my freshman year. I let my creative juices flow when I composed my minutes for the weekly council meetings, which were held on Wednesday evenings (I think). I mimeograaphed fifty copies and put one under everyone’s door on Thursdays. Quite a few guys told me that they enjoyed reading the minutes.

Elections of officers at AR were held in the spring. Only guys who planned to return to the house in September were allowed to vote. Since I anticipated that debating at the varsity level in my sophomore year would take up a lot of my time, I decided not to run for secretary or any major office at the end of freshman year (1967).

However, I did volunteer for the position of editor of the house newsletter, Rumsey Roomers, which was published intermittently using the same mimeograph machine as the minutes. It had not been uncommon for years to go by between publications. I published at least three issues during sophomore year. I didn’t really “edit” the newsletter; I wrote every word, including both the questions and answers of the interview section, which was modeled after the Playboy interviews. I interviewed God in the last issue that year.

At the end of my sophomore year I decided that I had enough control over classes and debate that I could run for president, a role that I referred to as the Big Banana, or EBM (El Banano Magno, the Spanishish version). I ran against Ken Gluski, who resided on the fourth floor.

We actually held a “debate”. That is, I gave a little speech in the lounge, and then Ken did the same. I introduced a number of ideas that were pretty good, but, I must admit, most were not within the purview of the president. Ken’s remarks were vague.

De gustibus non disputandum est.
De gustibus non disputandum est.

I campaigned pretty hard. My slogan was “Bananas and noodles don’t mix.” Someone told me that gluski was the Polish word for noodles. I just checked on translate.google.com. The real Polish word is kluski. Close enough for rock and roll.

I mimeographed a one-page letter about the election and slipped copies under doors. John Dalby, the fourth-floor RA, complained that this was unfair. There was no rule against it, but Ken did not have a mimeograph machine in his office. I replied that Ken could use the mimeograph machine. I even volunteered to type up whatever he wrote. This mollified John, but Ken never responded to my offer.

Where are the other three girls?
Where are the other three girls?

I won the election, but not by as many votes as I had projected. I do not remember who the vice-president or secretary were. During junior year I worked a lot with the treasurer, Keith Hartwell, the social chairman, Roger Warren, and the athletic chairman, Mike Murphy.

Roger immediately went to work lining up a “sister house” for the next year. Traditionally the two houses together sponsor a few parties. He somehow persuaded the largest girl’s dorm, Stockwell House, which boasted over four hundred residents, to match up with us. This was better than “Surf City”.

It is now called Stockwell Hall, and it is co-ed.
It is now called Stockwell Hall, and it is co-ed.

In the fall of 1968 Roger scheduled a mixer with Stockwell. I didn’t go, but it was evidently a fiasco. Girls showed up and then quickly left. Fortunately, Roger had another function scheduled with them a day or two later—a beach party at a nearby lake. Very early the morning after the mixer I printed up flyers and taped them above the urinals in each bathroom. They said something like “Pissed? So am I! But come to the beach party. Nobody will be able to walk away early.”

The beach party was a big success. Even I attended, and I played a rubber or two of bridge with Celia Phelan, the president of Stockwell House.

The university was pressed that year to loosen its restrictions on visits by students of the opposite sex (there were only two in those days) in the dorms. A U-M administrator issued a notice that each house could design its own rules, but a process had to be established through which complaints by residents were processed. I worked on amendments to the house’s bylaws to put in place a rigorous process for handling complaints about our regulations. It was unanimously passed by the council. I then wrote a letter to the university administrator explaining our approach. The response came back rather quickly. Our application was approved by the administration, the first one that had ever been accepted even though we had implemented absolutely no restrictions on the presence of women in the house. I was astounded and very pleased. In those days I considered myself an anarchist.

At the same time the council made a few changes to the bylaws. One allowed people to run for the same office more than once. This was not my idea, but I took advantage of it.

We didn't ask for these.
We didn’t ask for these.

For years AR had subscribed to Playboy magazine. The president retrieved the magazine from the house’s mail box and placed it in the lounge. One day the corporation sent “Allen Rumsey House” an invitation to join the Playboy Club in Detroit. We had to certify that we were at least 21 years of age. I wrote back that Allen Rumsey House was much older than 21, but few of the residents were. I asked for an honorary membership. They turned us down. I mean, come on. I was only asking for a lousy piece of paper.

In the spring semester a fair amount of money remained in the AR bank account. Someone (I don’t remember who) proposed that the House Council donate part of it to charity. He did a good job of describing the good works that the charity did. I voted to give it some money, but the motion was voted down.

Thinking that we must do something with our surplus, I met with Keith to determine as precisely as possible how much of the money would be available. I also asked Dave Zuk how much would be required to buy a good color television for the game room. We found a way to pay for the TV over three years, and that left us with about $500. I then proposed to the council that we buy the TV and pay a refund to all residents of $5 of their $20 dues. It passed unanimously.

This was a very popular move. People could not believe it when I handed them a $5 bill. Nobody ran against me in the presidential election in the spring of 1969.

The main issues in my senior year had to do with attempts by the university to turn the AR House Council officers into an unfunded police department. Some guys on one of the upper floors had done some mischief that led to damaged property. They may have thrown a water balloon that broke a window. The university sent a bill to West Quad. The West Quad Council wanted to send the bill to AR. I vigorously argued against this, which surprised everyone at the council meeting. If they had decided to do it, I would have ordered all of the money withdrawn from the bank and paid our bills in cash for the rest of the year.

By the way the new always-open visitation policy worked fine, as well as I could tell. Life was different, but the earth stayed in orbit. It turned out that surprisingly few members of the fair sex were all that eager to set foo in U-M’s oldest dorm. It probably did not help that the only ladies’ room in AR was in the lounge, which was nearly always occupied by nerds, a few of whom were capable of rude remarks.

Not for me.
Not for me.

I resigned as president early in the second semester of my senior year so that someone else could get some experience in the job. I do not recall who succeeded me.

The staff presented an award at the end of each year. It was named after a former resident who had donated the funds for a monetary award, which, as I recall, was $50 or $100. Roger won the award my junior year. They gave it to me in my senior year. Because I was a senior, I got no cash, but I did get to hear Jim (Gritty) Krogsrud refer to me as Mr. Allen Rumsey. That was nice.

Intramural sports: In my day the university conducted two sets of year-long intramural contests, one for the fraternity houses and one for the dorms. In the major sports they ran two leagues, A and B. The better players usually—but not always—played in A.

They may have also had competitions for women1 that I was unaware of, presumably pat-a-cake and hopscotch.

AR had never won the overall championship of the dormitory division before 1969-1970. The house’s athletic chairman that year was Mike Murphy. He was good at practically every imaginable sport, and he both played and encouraged others to play for the house. We ended up winning the overall title with the highest point total ever recorded.

I don’t think that the house’s A volleyball team lost a match in the four years that I resided there. We had a lot of good players who were 6’2″ or taller, and they started practicing together every September. In my senior year I was captain of the B volleyball team. We got to the finals, but we lost to Chicago House, a WQ rival, in a very close match. However, we were awarded the championship because the opponents used an ineligible player. Mike Murphy, who played on our A team, watched our match, recognized the ringer, and filed a successful appeal.

I actually dunked a basketball here. Scout's honor.
I actually dunked a basketball here. Scouts honor.

I was also a member of the team that won the B basketball championship, but I contributed little. I don’t think that we won the A championship, but we came close.

On one glorious day at the IM Building I dunked a basketball in warmups on a regulation 10′ basket. A number of people witnessed it. I had dunked volleyballs a few times, but this was the only time I managed to perform a real dunk.

I played significant roles in three team sports. A new event, slow-pitch softball, was held very early in the school year. We did not even understand that it was an official event until we reached the finals of the tournament. I had been pitching every game. I was not a great pitcher, if there is such a thing, but I could consistently throw strikes. Unfortunately, in the final game I lost that ability in the fourth or fifth inning. John Dalby replaced me, and we ended up losing the game.

My contribution to the B (touch) football team’s success was also substantial. As had happened when I played in the eighth grade (documented here), opponents almost never covered me. I remember that on one occasion I had been so open in the end zone so often that when Jim Burton finally threw it to me, I felt like making a fair catch.

Pick

My real specialty, however, was the pick play. The diagram at right is fundamentally flawed. There is a very good chance that the blocker, if he stands and waits for the defender as it indicates, will often be flagged by the ref. This is clearly illegal.

The intended receiver should NOT slant across the middle; instead, he should take one or two steps downfield and then cut sharply across the middle. Meanwhile, the blocker should make a shoulder fake toward the sideline, and then cut toward the middle (actually toward the other defender) and quickly look back toward the quarterback and wave for the ball. Then, when he collides with the defender, it will not look like he intended to block him.

I was expert at both techniques. As a blocker, I never missed the block, and I never was flagged for picking. As a receiver, the ball was once a thrown a foot or so behind me. I reached back and batted the ball up. I then abruptly turned up field, snatched the ball, and ran for a touchdown. I swear that this actually happened.

The pick plays nearly always worked. I remember that on one occasion, however, we could not even try it. We were scheduled to play on wet artificial turf. The footing was worse than on glare ice. Every time that anyone tried to plant his foot, he ended up on his butt.

I remember our final game pretty well. I think that we played Adams House. I scored a touchdown early while the opponents were not covering me yet. We scored a couple more, and so did they. I think that we were ahead by four or five points in the closing seconds. The opponents had the ball; I was standing on the sidelines. One of their players broke free and scored a touchdown. They then lined up for the extra point and tried to run it in. Our defense stopped them, but so what?

I was surprised to see the guys on our team, exhausted as they were, celebrating in the end zone and on the sidelines. It turned out that the opposing team had NOT scored a touchdown. One of our guys had tagged the runner just short of the goal line. The defensive stop on the last play actually had secured the championship for us. I felt foolish for a second, and then I was more excited than anyone, especially for the guys who made that heroic defensive stand.

Yowsah! I had a slight crush on Jane Fonda.
Yowsah! I had a slight crush on Jane Fonda.

These team sports did not win the overall title for us. Mike Murphy tirelessly organized participation in every event in every sport. We won few events in either of the two track meets, but we came close to winning the overalls both indoors and out. We had participants in every weight category in wrestling. The only one we won was when two of our wrestlers met in the heavyweight final.

Towards the end of the year Mike reported that the university was interested in ideas for new IM sports. I suggested soccer and marathon dancing. I had just seen They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?.

U-M’s current IM web page is here. It appears to me that they no longer have a league for the residence halls. I wonder if any house ever broke our record for total points. It still stood in the late seventies.

Road Trip: In the sixties the drinking age in Michigan was 21. Most residents of AR were younger. In Ohio, however, one only had to be 18 to purchase 3.2 percent beer. In my freshman or sophomore year the House Council organized a bus trip to Toledo, which is only 54 miles south on US 23, on a Friday or Saturday evening. I was not interested in the beer, but I decided to go when I heard that the last stop would be at the Town Hall, a burlesque house. John “Raz” LaPrelle and Ken Nelson for sure attended. I don’t remember who else was among the twenty or thirty guys on the bus.

I went into one or two bars, mainly to listen to the music. I remember that one band had several horn players, which allowed them to play a few songs that I did not expect to hear.

Ineda

I remember walking on the streets with guys who were bigger than I was and thinking “Gee, I bet we look really tough to people.”

Burlesque

In the end, however, I got bored and went to the Town Hall by myself while the other guys were still cruising bars. When I got there an X-rated film was being shown. All I remember is that the heroine was a natural redhead. Then a few live “dancers” did their stuff. Let’s just say that their best years were behind them. The star of the show, Ineda Mann, was much better.

It was a good experience, but it was never repeated. The Town Hall was razed in 1968. Even if the trip had been repeated, I would not have gone. Once was enough.

Presentations: A few times people from the outside offered to make a presentation to the residents. I have vivid recollections of two of them. The first occurred on a September evening just before the first football game. One of the assistant coaches came to the house with some game films from the previous year. He showed the films in the game room, and he supplied the play-by-play commentary. It was just the right combination of humor and insider information. It really got everyone psyched up about the upcoming season.

King

I did not enjoy the second one, which occurred a year or two later, at all. In fact, I got quite angry at the presenters, and I let them have it with both barrels. The two of them represented the John Birch Society. They made many outrageous claims. The one that really set me off was the accusation that Martin Luther King supported Communism. Their evidence was a photograph of him shaking hands with Fidel Castro. This was stupidest reasoning that I had ever heard, and I heard (and made) a lot of dumb arguments in my four years of debate.

JP II

I tried to locate on the Internet the photograph of MLK with Castro. There are a lot of photographs of Fidel with international figures and a lot of King with international figures, but I could not locate even one with the two of them together. I did find photographs of the Cuban leader with at three different popes. Nobody has ever been more strongly anti-Communist than Pope John Paul II, the man who was more responsible for the dissolution of the Soviet Bloc than anyone.

The guys were shocked at my reaction to this demagoguery. None of them had ever seen me angry. It only happens about once every ten years or so.

Not that kind of shower party.
Not that kind of shower party.

Other Pastimes: Perhaps the most emblematic of all of the events at AR was the shower party. The concept is simple. One member would suggest that another guy had done something so outrageous (not necessarily bad) that he deserved to be thrown into the nearest shower fully clothed. A voice vote would be taken, and democracy prevailed.

I was part of a few shower parties. Once a set of guys tried to throw me in the shower, and they finally gave up. It was not that I was strong—far from it. I simply pumped my knees. Some guys grabbed my arms and torso, but they never got me horizontal, and my very bony knees did some damage to a few faces.

I was a member of many shower party crews, mostly because my roommate, John Cruickshank, was the most frequent recipient. He was addicted to terrible puns. I guarantee that I never gave up on getting a guy in the shower. My specialty was ankles.

Once I had their ankles together, I would not let go. It was only a matter of time.
Once I had their ankles together, I would not let go. It was only a matter of time.

One day one of the guys sitting in the game room in the basement announced that no one could throw him in the challenge. Handing my glasses to someone, I replied that three of us could do it. I pointed to Ken Nelson and John “Raz” LaPrelle, who took up the challenge. I dove at his feet and pinned both of his ankles together. I held on for dear life. Ken and Raz got grips on his torso. It took a long time, maybe thirty minutes, but we got him out the game room door, up the stairs to the first floor, all the way down the hallway to the bathroom, through two doorways to the shower that someone else had turned on. We shoved him in.

The wet person was Peter Petty, who was 6’10” tall and weighed 350 pound. This was one of the four or five greatest accomplishments of my life.

In my era AR was famous for its water balloons. A few guys threw balloons out on the courtyard side, but the best hurling was towards the sidewalks on East Madison and South Quad. The primary advantage was the target-rich environment. Also, there were no doors on that side of our building, and it was not a bit obvious how to gain access to the house from the south side.

Blue_Front

The two most distinguished practitioners of this art were Frank Bell and Ken Nelson. Their styles could not have been more different. Frank dealt in volume, careful targeting, and deadly accuracy. He bought balloons by the gross at the Blue Front2 party store on the corner of Packard and State Streets.

WB

Frank’s favorite launching site was the first floor bathroom. He told me that his favorite target was a group of two or three females walking on the sidewalk who were engaged in conversation. His objective was to provoke the target into verbal outrage that did not spill over into a confrontation. He did not have a major-league arm, but he (with an unbelievable amount of practice) was able to loft the balloon considerably and make it land with uncanny accuracy at the targets feet. Immediately after launching he shut the window and listened for his payoff in screams and screeches. Facing a bank of 120 windows, no one caught unawares could possibly suspect that the source was at street level.

Targets

Ken was the guy whose arm was so strong that he beat out a major league pitcher (Jim Burton) for quarterback of the house’s A football team. His style was entirely different from Frank’s. He did not buy balloons in bulk as Frank did, but if he felt like flinging a few, someone would gladly supply the balloons just to be part of the event. He threw from the third or fourth floor. His heaves, which splattered in front of the door to South Quad were so epic that no one could possibly have guessed that they came from Allen Rumsey House. Unless they saw the balloon in flight—which almost never happened—the victims always looked up at the windows overhanging them in South Quad.

I never threw anything, but I considered the water balloons fun and, as the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy says, “mostly harmless”. No one suffered anything worse than wet shoes and stockings. However, a couple of freshmen who lived on the third floor when I was a senior indulged in something that was a lot more dangerous.

Wirst_Rocket

They had a Wrist-Rocket, which is a slingshot that is affixed to the wrist in order to improve accuracy even when the elastic part is pulled back past one’s ear. These two guys occasionally used it to shoot beebees in the direction of South Quad.

One evening two guys from South Quad had their window open and were being unduly boisterous. One of the guys with the slingshot fired at their window. The beebee went through the window of the South Quad residents and reportedly broke a lamp in their room.

Killian

The two SQ guys were not run-of-the-mill students. They were two of the most famous people on campus, and both were big and powerful. Tim Killian was a lineman on the football team who was more famous for kicking field goals.3 His roomy, Dan Dierdorf, was the best offensive lineman in the country. He became a five-time all-pro for the St. Louis Cardinals. He stood 6’3″ and weighed 285 pounds. If you asked everyone on campus to name one person whom they would never want to anger, nearly everyone would select Dan Dierdorf. I know I would have, even before I saw him at close range.

The shot from the Wrist-Rocket set Dierdorf off. He charged across East Madison and stormed through the door to AR. The first thing that he saw was the lounge, where I and a bunch of other nerds were seated. I was probably playing bridge. We all recognized him immediately.

Dierdorf

“Who here has a gun?” he demanded

I told him that no one in this house had a gun. This was true, but I was pretty sure of what might make a person think that someone did. He responded, “Someone shot a lamp out in my room, and they are going to pay for it.”

Someone else said, “There are no guns here.”

Dierdorf picked up a broom that was leaning against a corner. He nonchalantly snapped the broom’s handle in two in his hands. He had no need for a fulcrum. Our eyes got wider, and our hearts beat faster in anticipation of “flight or fight” mode. Believe me; no one was considering “fight”.

To our great relief he marched resolutely up the stairs with the broomstick piece in his hand. His bellowing continued, but he never actually did anything. Although the guys with the slingshot would not have won a popularity contest in AR, no one ratted them out. As usual in a group of guys, omertà prevailed, and there were no further incidents with the Wrist-Rocket.

Arnold

There were lots of other diversions in the dorm: sockey (played in the corridor with a rolled up pair of socks), cans (also in the corridor with a frisbee and four coke canstwo stacked at each end), epic water wars between two floors that created waterfalls on the staircases, and Arnold Palmer’s Indoor golf Game in the lounge. The course was called Sunny Beach.

The golf game was really enjoyable until a guy whose name I don’t remember (and who was not even on any of the university’s athletic teams) decided to play with us one day. You could make the little Arnold figure swing by pulling on a circular ring located on the handle of a golf club that was attached to Arnold’s back. This guy had so much power in his trigger finger that he actually drove the green on a par five! Other guys could come close on a par four, but the par five hole was the entire length of the lounge. Reaching the green in two required two monstrous strokes for everyone else.

Diplomacy

Someone brought the Diplomacy board game into the house. We spent a few days digesting the rules. Finally, we got together the requisite seven guys and set aside a weekend day to play.

There are no dice or anything else designed to bring randomness into the game. This game is all about making deals. The rules set a time limit on the bargaining sessions, but they are totally unrealistic. We agreed to ignore the time limits. After several hours someone violated a bargain that he made with another player and stabbed him in the back. The second or third time that it happened, the victim got extremely angry and quit.

We tried playing one more time, and essentially the same thing happened. We never managed to finish a game. I was fascinated with the game, and I bought it for myself. I was never able to gind seven people willing to commit a day to playing it. It survived several moves and has been sitting in the basement of our house for decades.

Of course, we also played cards. We played rubber bridge whenever we could find four willing players. Some games would go on for hours with players finding substitutes when they need to go somewhere. Usually the games were in the lounge, but occasionally we would play in my “suite”, which was right next door.

Dylan_Albums

I have a pretty clear recollection of one monumental session in Room 109 that went on from about ten in the morning until well after supper. We only broke for meals. The stereo was playing one Bob Dylan record after another. When the stack was done, the dummy would flip it over.

Yarborough

My recollection is that throughout that entire session I only had one opening hand. I have subsequently played enough bridge to deduce that this claim is probably apocryphal, but I am quite sure that at some point I opened the window, stuck my head through it, and screamed to the heavens that I was sick of never getting any cards.

A few of us also played at least once in the sanctioned duplicate pairs game at the Michigan Union. By then we were playing Howard Schenken’s Big Club. We did pretty well, but we did not finish first.

KJBB

Grub: For burgers there was only one choice, Krazy Jim’s Blimpy Burger with Krazy Ray on the grill and Krazy Jim taking orders. It was very close; we took a shortcut through a fence. It closed in 2013. A store with a very similar name opened downtown the next year.

Omega pizza, which was on the northeast side of central campus, had the best pizza when I was an undergraduate. It was a long walk, but we felt that it was worth it. If the weather was bad, which happened often, we ordered delivery from somewhere. There are references to Omega Pizza on the Internet, but I think that they have moved or gone out of business.

In the sixties there was a small shop on State Street that made outstanding hot submarine sandwiches. It was gone by the time that I returned in 1974.

NW

Miscellaneous: I was naughty at least once. Newsweek magazine somehow got addresses for everyone in the dorms at U-M. They sent postcards offering discounted subscriptions. To get one, all you had to do was put a checkmark in a and mail the postcard back to them. There might have been a place for a signature.

The postcards must have arrived at West Quad in one big stack with a rubber band around it. Instead of distributing them to the individual boxes of the addressees, the mail person just put them out on a table with a sheet of paper telling people to take them if interested.

One evening when no one was around I picked up the stack of cards and dropped them in a mailbox. I then did the same with the ones at East Quad and South Quad.

Newsweek evidently did not check to see if the boxes were checked, and no one there was surprised that so many were returned at once from one location. Everybody in the dorms got a few free issues of the magazine and then an unwanted bill. A few people were upset for a little while, but it soon blew over. Nobody knew that I did this until decades later.

Franke

I went to mass every Sunday at St. Mary’s, the parish associated with the Newman Center. I liked the music that they sang, especially the pieces written and led by Bob Franke. Eventually he moved over to the Episcopal church.

Jack

I attended at least two performances at The Ark, a “coffee house” associated with the Episcopal Church. One was to hear Franke. The other was when Ramblin’ Jack Elliott came to town. His concert was fantastic. He sang “Me and Bobby McGee” twice because he was dissatisfied with his first rendition. This was before Janis Joplin released her version. I bought one of Jack’s albums, but I was disappointed with it. He was much better in person.

Both Bob and Jack are still alive in 2020, and they both still perform regularly.

One of the local bands really impressed me. They changed their name from The Long Island Sound to Fox and then to something else. I loved their song “I Want to be a Cowboy.” Dave Nemerovski, a resident of AR, was related to one of the members.

Willie

I did not watch a lot of television. One show that filled the TV room every week was Mission Impossible. A group of us would count the words uttered by Willie Armitage, the strong man. I think that the record was thirteen. I liked Mr. Riggs better than Mr. Phelps.

Bill_K

Bill Kennedy at the Movies was on every day. I would pop down if Bill was showing a Bogey movie or one with Gary Cooper, the Marx Brothers, or W.C. Fields. One day I was astounded to watch The Story of Mankind, the strangest movie (with the most amazing cast) ever made. On another occasion I watched The Pad and How to Use It4, a bittersweet movie that sparked my interest in opera.

Walter

Several of us were big fans of Walter Brennan, who won three of the first five Oscars for Best Supporting Actor. He had a fairly popular Western called The Guns of Will Sonnett. Walter and his grandson rode around looking for the kid’s father, a famous gunfighter named Jim Sonnett. When people asked how fast he was, Walter would say, “He’s fast, but the boy here is faster, and I’m faster than the both of them. No brag, just fact.”

I wrote to Walter Brennan to wish him luck in finding his son and to ask for an autographed picture. He sent it, and I put it in the AR trophy case. It was still there in the middle seventies.

Saturday morning was often devoted to watching cartoons. I know that we watched “George of the Jungle” and “Rocky and Bullwinkle” in reruns.

One of our favorite shows was a live-action kids show called “The Banana Splits Adventure Hour”. It featured four performers in bizarre animal costumes. Bingo was a gorilla, Fleegle a dog, Drooper a lion, and Snorky an elephant. They were also a rock-and-roll band that spent a lot of time in amusement parks.

From left: Drooper, Bingo, Fleegle, and Snorky.

Each Split had a very distinct personality. All of them could talk except Snorky, who only honked. My favorite was Drooper, who was played by Anne W. Withrow. Drooper had a long tail, which apparently got in the way sometimes. When she wasn’t pretending to play the bass guitar, Anne usually carried the tail in her left hand. All the rest of the performers were guys. Of course, the costumes meant that you could not tell.

Occasionally they would do some jokes that were very unusual for a kid’s show. I remember that once they asked how to get a miniature poodle to pull a dog sled faster. The answer was “Get a bigger whip.”

We all sang along to the Banana Splits song. I still can recite the lyrics, which you can read here. The third verse (“Two banana, four banana, …”) was not sung on the show. It was added for the non-hit single.

The late sixties was not a good era for cinema. There were no multiplexes within walking distance, but two very large theaters bordered the campus. A few smaller theaters showed foreign films. I saw three movies that I really liked: Antonioni’s Blow-Up, Midnight Cowboy, and (my favorite) Z. At the end of Z everyone in the theater loudly applauded. I had never heard a single person applaud at the end of any other flick that I had seen. You know that they can’t hear you, right?

Fred is now more famous as Too Slim, the bass player for Riders in the Sky.
Fred is now more famous as Too Slim, the bass player for Riders in the Sky.

Fred LaBour was one year behind me at U-M. He worked at the Michigan Daily. On October 14, 1969. the Daily, which was (and presumably still is) read by nearly all students, published an article written by Fred and John Gray that confirmed the conspiracy theory that Paul McCartney was dead. Their evidence was mostly in songs recorded by the Beatles, but it could only be heard if you played them backwards. Many students did, including some in AR. Adding to the mindless speculation was a lot of fun, but nobody whom I knew took it seriously.

LMC did not debate; I never heard of it. Now it has two additional campuses.
LMC did not debate; I never heard of it. Now it has two additional campuses.

The Daily also published a gigantic crossword puzzle, and offered a prize to the best solution submitted. AR’s team, which included me, finished second or third. I think that we missed the three-letter word for a college in Benton Harbor. We got to go to a party full of journalism nerds. It was the only party that I attended other than the AR-Stockwell beach party in my four undergraduate years. That is also where I drank the only beer that I consumed as an undergraduate.

Some alcohol was consumed in AR and, especially in the last year or so, some marijuana. I never smoked any, but occasionally you could smell it in the hallway. However, it was in no way comparable to what was around me every day when I was in the army in Albuquerque. I wrote about those amazing days here.


1. Women were not allowed to be cheerleaders (!) or band members when I came to Michigan in 1966. The cheerleaders were male gymnasts and members of the trampoline team. In my four undergraduate years I never heard any mention of sports for women. Title IX was not passed until 1972. There may well have been no varsity sports for women when I was at U-M. Prior to 1956 women could only enter the Michigan Union, where President Kennedy gave a speech in1960, if they were escorted by a man. Even so, they had to use the side door. The Billiards Room in the Union was closed to women until 1968. People at the time considered U-M a very liberal university.

2. Inside and out, it seemed like a relic in 1966, but it did not go out of business until fifty-three years later. They even sold magazines for nudist colonists! New owners reopened it as a craft beer and wine store a few months later in 2019.

3. Tim Killian’s most valuable contribution to the university might have been the fact that he removed more than half of the entries in the U-M football record book. On October 26, 1968, I watched him kick three field goals in the 33-20 victory over Minnesota in Michigan Stadium. This broke the previous record of one, shared by everyone who had ever kicked a field goal in Michigan’s storied football history.

4. The Pad appears to have disappeared. You can’t buy a copy in any format, and it is never on television. I would really like to see it again.

1966 Summer Between High School & College

Transition. Continue reading

In June of 1996 my dad and I made our first and only road trip together. The primary purpose was to help me decide between the University of Iowa and the University of Michigan.

Our first stop was in Detroit, where my dad introduced me to Howard Finsilver1, a sales agent for my dad’s employer, BMA, and his son, Sandy, who was my age and planned to attend U-M in the fall. I spent some time with Sandy and a group of his friends from (I think) Mumford High. At least one of them was also going to U-M. Then (as now) most good students in the state hoped to attend U-M. In some parts of the country many top students disparage state schools, but not in Michigan. Sandy and all of his friends were quite impressed that I had been admitted as an out-of-state student.

We shot some pool in the basement of the house of one of the friends. Someone then drove Sandy and me around Detroit to show me some of its highlights. I don’t remember details, but I doubt that the Chamber of Commerce would have agreed with the sites that they chose.

The diag and the bell tower at U-M.
The view from the steps of U-M’s graduate library: the diag and the bell tower.

On the next day dad and I drove the thirty-seven miles to Ann Arbor to talk with a professor from the math department. I don’t remember the specifics of the conversation, but I absolutely fell in love with the town, the campus, the entire atmosphere. And that was before I ever set foot in the football stadium. Just about everyone who visits the town in the spring or summer has this reaction.

On the way to Iowa, we stopped somewhere in Indiana to play some golf. I don’t think that either of us enjoyed the round much.

Corn

The last hundred or so miles before we got to Iowa City we saw almost nothing but corn on either side of the road. The professor we talked to at the university made a pretty good case, but I had already decided that I wanted to attend the University of Michigan.

Birdie
My dad was fairly often involved in providing entertainment for some of the company’s salesmen and regional sales managers when they came to the home office in KC. In the middle of July one of the salesmen had brought two of his sons with him on such a visit. One was close to my age and the other, who also worked as a BMA salesman, was in his twenties. I think that their last name was Roberson. BMA bought three primo tickets for me and the two sons for the Starlight Theater, an outdoor venue in Swope Park that showed musicals in the summer. The show was Bye-Bye Birdie, and it starred the rock group Gary Lewis2 and the Playboys. This occurred at the height of the group’s popularity. The group had one big hit, “This Diamond Ring”, and a number of other songs that did well on the charts.

I am sure that the newspaper’s caption was useful to those who thought that J.L. was a government figure. If the wife bent forward just a little or wore her hair down, I would be in this photo.

Gary Lewis’s father was the comic actor, Jerry Lewis. On Monday, July 11, Jerry and his wife and entourage were in KC for their son’s opening night. Believe it or not we were in the fifth row right in the middle. Jerry Lewis was seated in the fourth row between his wife, who did not utter a word all night, and another woman who must have been an agent or something. Jerry Lewis himself sat a few inches from my right knee.

As soon as Jerry Lewis arrived, he consulted privately with another staff member who was seated on the other side of Lewis’s wife. The staffer left for a few minutes and then returned with a large paper cup that was quite different from the kind available at the concession stand. Lewis sipped from it until intermission. Before the play started a few young people came up to ask for his autograph. No dice. The staffer who brought the drink did not let them get close to the star.

During the first few minutes of the performance J.L. tried to record the sound. He had great difficulty operating the recording device. The results of his efforts were a snake’s nest of tape around his feet and a torrent of blue language, the likes of which I would not hear again until I took part in basic training at Fort Polk in 1970. He abandoned the recording project somewhere before intermission.

At intermission J.L. and the staffer exited through a door that was not accessible to the public. They returned just before the play resumed. J.L. was fidgety and generally disruptive throughout the rest of the show. He downed another large paper cup of the mystery beverage during the second half. The Robersons told me that they could smell alcohol.

The play itself was OK. The rest of the actors were fine. I am not a big fan of musical comedy, but I had really liked the story when I saw the movie with Ann-Margret3. Gary Lewis was not believable as a teen dreamboat, and his rendition of “One Last Kiss” was almost laughable, IMHO. The group then played “This Diamond Ring”. They might have also played one or two other songs. There was no screaming from teenage girls in the audience.

I enjoyed Cinderfella, mostly because I was captivated by Anna Maria Alberghetti
I enjoyed Cinderfella, mostly because I was captivated by Anna Maria Alberghetti

At the end the Robersons asked the staff lady politely for autographs, but Jerry Lewis wanted only to get out of the theater immediately. He was in a very bad mood.

My opinion of Jerry Lewis did not change much. I thought that he was a self-centered obnoxious jerk both before and after this occasion. He pretty much ruined the event for everyone within fifteen feet of him.

I don’t remember what I did for the rest of the summer other than mow lawns and play golf. I don’t recall a job.

In late August my parents drove me and some of my belongings to Ann Arbor. Jamie probably came with us. I don’t remember much about the trip except my eagerness to get on with the next phase of my life. Of course, I was also a little nervous.

The University had notified me that I had been assigned to 315 Allen Rumsey4 House in West Quad. We drove there and met the third-floor RA, Jim Krogsrud, whom everyone called Gritty. Because classes did not begin until the following week, almost no one had moved in yet. Nearly all incoming freshmen had attended the week-long orientation period during the summer. I was allowed to stay in room 315 while I attended the orientation.

Gritty explained that all the rooms were doubles, but three people had been assigned temporarily to room 315. He said that he was sure that this would be promptly resolved. The family helped me carry my stuff up to the room. Then I said good-bye to them, and they drove off into the sunset.

Gritty asked me a few questions, one of which was whether I played bridge. He was very happy to hear that I did. He and Andy, the house’s RD, liked to play, and they were looking for opponents. He also explained how the laundry and other aspects of life in the dorm worked.

They must have served meals in the West Quad dining room for the few of us who were there that week. I don’t remember having to find restaurants or walk to another dorm.

After breakfast on the day after my parents left I met with my orientation group. Our group leader was a guy. I don’t remember his name. The members of our group were all enrolled in the college of Literature, Science, and the Arts. One of the first orders of business was taking language placement tests. LS&A had a two-year language requirement. I was preparing myself mentally for the Latin test when the group leader told me that he had received a note stating that I did not need to take the test. He said that he had never heard of such a thing. He advised me to take the test anyway.

Vergil or Marlon Brando?
Vergil or Marlon Brando?

I showed up for the Latin test. It consisted of a multiple choice grammar test and a sight translation of some lines from Vergil. It seemed pretty easy to me; I was the first person to leave the test room.

I later learned that my 790 on the SAT’s Latin achievement test was the reason why I did not need to take the test. However, I did not get any academic credits for skipping the four semesters of introductory Latin. I did, however get three credits for Advanced Placement English and eight for AP math.

A few days later I got to consult with my academic advisor, who was, of all things, a biology professor. I only met with him for a few minutes once per semester; I don’t recall his name. He told me that I should have been invited to the honors program. He made a few phone calls, after which he told me that I was now in it. He then penciled in a schedule of four classes for me:

  • Math 195. There were three math sequences, two for honors and one for others. 195 was the first class for the higher ranking of the two introductory honors math sequences.
  • Great Books, an honors class in the English department.
  • Chemistry 103, the introductory class for students who did not take chemistry in high school.
  • Russian 101, which would meet a requirement for math majors—two semesters of Russian or German.
  • Two semesters of phys ed were also required for freshmen. I picked the course in golf for the first semester.

However, when I got to the actual registration, I discovered that all sections of Great Books were closed. So, I added a 300-level Latin class that focused on Cicero’s orations. It was only a two-hour class, but I already had eleven credits under my belt from the AP tests.

I felt pretty good about this schedule. The subject that worried me the most was chemistry. I figured that I would need to work harder than I did in high school, but that was not really saying much.

While at registration I came across a girl distributing flyers for the U-M debate program. On Tuesday, the day before classes began, the team was holding an open house for anyone who was interested in debate. Based on my lackluster high school career, I had little expectation of debating at U-M, but I took the flyer anyway.

I was on my own in Ann Arbor. I knew almost no one. Only a handful of guys5 had moved into Allen Rumsey House yet. The only other person on the third floor of AR was Gritty. I probably should have made an effort to meet people in my orientation group—in all likelihood most were from other states with no friends in Ann Arbor. It never occurred to me. That’s the way I am.

Solitaire

I spent a great deal of time in my room that first week playing one-at-a-time, once-through-the-deck Klondike solitaire. I recorded all of my scores. I also read quite a bit. I had an AM-FM radio, but no other electronics.

In 1966 all freshman students were required to live in dorms. The residence halls were called “houses.” The men’s houses were in three groups. The houses in East Quad and West Quad had only males. South Quad had men’s houses and women’s houses. The remainder of the houses for girls were on the northeast side of central campus in the area known as “The Hill”.

ARSatHaving been constructed in the thirties, Allen Rumsey House (#1 in the above photo) was the oldest dorm on campus. Little had been done to modernize it in the ensuing decades. With approximately one hundred guys, it was also the smallest house.

On the east side was a corridor between AR and the International House (#3). Wenley House (2), which was almost as old as AR, shared a wall on the west. South Quad was to the south, on the other side of East Madison St. On the north side was a courtyard. Two doors on the other side of led to the central section of West Quad, which contained the cafeteria and a lounge area. A third door led to the bowling alley (#4) and a shortcut to the Michigan Union (#5) and the rest of the central campus, the site of all my classes.

I quickly found the lounge on the first floor of Allen Rumsey House. It had comfortable chairs, a trophy case, a rug, and a piano. The house subscribed to the Michigan Daily, the Ann Arbor News, and a few magazines, including, I later learned, Playboy.

Juke_Box

Downstairs was a game room with a small pool table, a ping pong table, and a free juke box! A section of this room and a separate room had televisions and chairs. Both TVs were 19″ black and whites. Next to the small TV room was a study hall that AR shared with Wenley House.

I eventually got up the nerve to shoot pool with another lonely guy named Dan Schuman. He had no hair anywhere on his body, and he was very cynical. We got along great. We played eight-ball. Although he was a better shot than I was, he was unaccustomed to an opponent who always left the cue ball pinned to a rail. The games were long and, for him, frustrating. I usually won.

Ulrichs

Used books for every class could be purchased at the two big bookstores, Ulrich’s and Follett’s. Ulrich’s was on South University; Follett’s was on State St. I bought the textbooks for Russian, Math, and Chemistry at one of them. The Latin class had no textbook.

Follett's

I think that classes started on the Wednesday after Labor Day, September 7. By Tuesday I knew that my roommates in 315 were Ed Agnew from Bloomfield, MI, and Paul Stoner from Adrian. Across the hall in 314 was Dave Zuk. His assigned roommate did not show up. So, Gritty had us draw straws or something to decide who would move across the hall. Paul was selected.

This was good news and bad news. I did not like Ed very much, but I did like his stereo. His taste in music did not accord with mine or anyone else’s that I have ever met. He loved “big band” music, and his all-time favorite recording was the soundtrack from Victory at Sea. However, he did let me use his stereo when he was not around, which, I soon discovered, was essentially every afternoon and evening.

I did not bring any of my records, but 1966 was an exceptional year for popular music. I spent most of my savings on albums. That is to say, I bought three or four records.

I didn't have any, but this is what they looked like.
I didn’t have any, but this is what razor blades looked like in the sixties.

Our room was on the north (courtyard) side. I claimed the bed on the west side, leaving the one on the east side for Ed. Two big windows on the north side were fronted by a large double desk with two chairs. The east wall was an external wall, but there were no windows. We each had a dresser. Maybe we shared a closet. There was a sink with a mirror over it on my side. There was also a slot over the sink for disposal of dull razor blades. I have never seen anything like it anywhere else. I wonder how many blades were inside the wall. I used an electric razor in college. Each room had a plain wall phone. I don’t remember whether they allowed us to make calls on it or not. To get mail you had to walk to the center part of West Quad next to the cafeteria.

I always just walked up State St. to the Frieze Bldg. I don't know why google maps advises avoiding it.
I always just walked up State St. to the Frieze Bldg. I don’t know why google maps advises avoiding it.

I attended the debate meeting in a room on the second floor of the Frieze Building, the headquarters of the speech department. About twenty people attended. We got to meet Dr. Bill Colburn and a couple of grad student coaches, including Jeff Sampson, who debated at Northwestern, a national power. Evidently there was no individual events program.

All of the new people filled out a form outlining our experience and interests, and then we watched a debate between two of the varsity teams. I thought that they were both horrible, and I was shocked to learn that they were U-M’s best teams.

I was paired with a fellow from Portland, ME, named Bob Hirshon. They told us that the topic was “Resolved that the United States should substantially reduce its foreign policy commitments.” Bill and Jeff privately made it clear that they were excited that Bob and I were interested in debate, and they wanted us to represent U-M at the Michigan Intercollegiate Speech League (MISL) novice tournament in October. We would be debating only on the negative. I was second negative.

I was shocked to be on the receiving end of all of this attention. I was uncertain whether I would be able to handle it, but I agreed to try. So did Bob.


1. Howard Finsilver died in 2005.

2. According to Wikipedia Gary Lewis was a better drummer than a singer. His voice was overdubbed on the recordings of his hits. I was surprised to learn that he was drafted the following January and served in Vietnam and Korea. After his hitch in the army he stayed on the fringes of show business with new incarnations of his band. In 2020 he was still performing at age 74.

Ann-Margret

3. Just to be clear, Ann-Margret appeared in the movie; she wasn’t my date.

4. Ann Arbor is named after Ann Allen and Ann Rumsey, early settlers of the town.

5. In 1966 there were no coed dorms at U-M. In fact, female students were not even allowed to enter Allen Rumsey House except under special circumstances.