Introducing A Series of Poems to Celebrate Our 40th Anniversary
March 31 2025
Marshall writes: “On September 23, 2014, we received an email from Opera Atelier patron Mark Kikot, which contained the first of many beautiful poems he has written for us over the years, all inspired by Opera Atelier productions that he has attended.
The collection is impressive, and we thought that as part of Opera Atelier’s 40th anniversary celebration, it would be interesting to share these poems with our friends and supporters. Mr. Kikot has generously agreed to allow us to do so.
We will share the poems with you in chronological order.”
Seduction Unexpected
Opera Atelier’s Pre-Season Gathering
How I arrived
is easier explained
than what
I’m doing here.
I’m just a hanger-on
who knows
someone
who knows.
I do not have the money
or the musical cachet
to bring this art to life.
And so I slip past faces
flush with means
that chat and sip and munch
while waiting
for an aria, or two,
a sampling from Alcina.
As the flute-glass thin soprano
sets the stage
for love betrayed,
the room
begins to quiet
till our tongues are hushed.
Her voice then lifts
in veils of rent despair
and rises
into anguish,
searing, cutting,
self-inflicted wounds
which twist to sudden rage
and hunger for revenge,
yet cannot be sustained,
but fall at last
through grief of loss
and lost identity.
Though I had come
expecting nothing more
than lecture notes
on period and set design,
or notes rehearsed to catch
like scales of butterflies
the nuances of human sound,
I sit here moved
almost to tears
by heart’s lament,
as if her sorrow
was the thing I sought,
a secret buried deep as death
in each of us,
as if I were the cause
and the effect.
But now her suffering
takes on another form,
becomes a kind of parody
because her voice is forced,
contrived and desperate.
It strains
in search of incantations
that she needs
to conjure up the energy
and do
what she must do,
create
what she imagines,
wills, desires;
it leaves her standing back
amazed
by her achievement,
while I feel myself contorted into rock.
September 23, 2014