"[M]any complaints have been received from patrons of the concerts who are annoyed by knitting during performances[.]"

Put down the needles.

I have knitted through games at Wrigley Field (that sparked an argument with my companion), and I've also knitted during an evening performance of a play (yawn) at an outdoor theater.

A Closer Look (Part 70)

Kaunas, Lithuania, November 11, 1939. An operetta cast member has applied her stage makeup.

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The Life Box (Part 29)

Sparks, Nevada, October 1979. A friend worked at a Reno, Nevada, casino as a stage lighting technician after he graduated from college. I was scheduled to visit him, and I bought tickets for the Liberace show. Circumstances later prohibited me from making the trip, but I saved this ad.

Season Tickets

Kaunas, Lithuania, January 21, 1927. This is a pass to the Lithuanian National Theater. It was issued to the American Consul to Lithuania. The Consul wrote, "Today the Foreign Office sent me a season ticket to the opera good for two seats in the diplomatic box every night during the 1927 season. We have not been there yet because the opera is far back from the street in the public garden and automobiles cannot drive up to the entrance. In this cold weather Lily does not like to walk out in the cutting night air."

Thanks to the Consul's Grandaughter for making this photo available to us.

My maternal Grandmother, Jadzė, bought season tickets to the same theater. Mom remembers attending performances there. Mom also recalls how wives of the Soviet soldiers arrived at the theater after the Russians occupied Lithuania in 1941. Most of the Russian women were of peasant stock, but they had heard they should attend the opera in ballgowns. The woman appeared in the theater lobby wearing satin nightgowns.

Musical Memory

My Mom has been a lifelong opera and operetta lover. She and Dad occasionally bought season tickets to Chicago's Lyric Opera, and we usually listened to Saturday opera radio broadcasts (but I always preferred ballet). We celebrated New Year's Eve by watching Die Fledermaus on television, and we caught a staging of The Merry Widow in Central City, Colorado.

When Mom was growing up, the three most popular sopranos where Jeanette MacDonald, Marta Eggerth, and Deanna Durbin. Mom collected cards with images of each singer, and she and her friends went to the cinema* to watch the dubbed movies in which the starlets appeared.

In about 1934 or 1935 Marta Eggerth arrived in Kaunas for a concert. The city officials prohibited Eggerth from singing in the opera house because Eggerth specialized in operettas, a musical form, according to authorities, beneath the dignity of the opera house. Eggerth therefore sang at an outdoor theater. My Mom's maternal Aunt Dora took Mom to that concert. Mom recalls Eggerth wore a white gown on stage. When we watched a few Eggerth clips on YouTube, Mom even got a bit misty.

Vienna, Austria, July 1971. This is the Vienna State Opera. It was natural for Dad to photograph this building when we visited Vienna.

*The same cinema at which Dora used to accompany the silent movies.

A Closer Look (Part 37)

Kaunas, Lithuania, about 1928. My Parents had a stylish teacher.

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Play the part.

Toronto, Ontario, Canada, about 1957. Toronto Al—the little fellow in the dark jacket who's standing to the left of the Virgin Mary—takes his place among the stars of the Christmas play.

Thanks to Toronto Al for making this photo available to us.

Three Muses

Vilnius, Lithuania, August 2011. Three muses—drama, tragedy, and comedy—grace the façade of the Lithuanian National Drama Theatre. The building went up in 1940, during the first Soviet occupation of the country.

Thanks to Toronto Al for making this photo available to me.

A School Play

My Dad sometimes pulled this photograph out as evidence that he and my Mom were once children. I used to be amazed by it because I couldn't imagine that my Parents ever were that young.

I don't know what play the children were staging here. But it's a happy scene, and the teacher—on the right, in the 1920s-style head scarf—seems to have everyone under control.

Let the sun shine in!

Kaunas, Lithuania, about 1928. My Dad sits in the front row. He's the second boy, from the left, wearing the beak mask that covers his face. My Mom is in the penultimate row, in the center, with her hands forming the "M" over her head.

The bearded elves in the front row are saluting the photographer, and the fairies have their arms outstretched. Could this have been a reenactment of some Lithuanian pagan myth?

Operetta

My Mom's maternal aunt, Dora, played the piano as an accompanist for silent movies. Dora also came to know many theater people.

Dora died in 1992, about one year after Lithuania regained its independence. After independence, families again could send letters and photos freely. A friend mailed many of Dora's snapshots to my Mom. Among them was this photo of the cast of a comic operetta.

Kaunas, Lithuania, November 11, 1939. Members of an operetta cast pose backstage.