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Siggy a team player as Mets fan or long time chorister with SFO
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Siggy sings the national anthem at the Giants and Mets game
Sigmund Seigel or Siggy has always been a team player. Siggy as he is known at the opera played shortstop as a child. He grew up in New York, a Mets fan. How could he have foreseen that he would sing the national anthem in San Francisco at a Mets game, his name flashing on the score board, pictured right.
How could anyone have foreseen the revolution in opera in recent years, with free European style simulcasts at the ballpark? The opera’s summer season opens with a simulcast of Tosca at AT&T Park on Friday, June 5; The fall season includes a simulcast of Verdi’s Il Travatore on Saturday, September 19.
Announces the opera: Baseball and opera fans alike have the rare opportunity to enjoy glorious opera in the beautiful and convivial outdoor setting of AT&T Park. Webcor Presents Opera at the Ballpark is made possible through the extraordinary technology of the Koret-Taube Media Suite.
Summer events include the traditional picnic opera: San Francisco Opera in the Park on Sunday, September 13 in Golden Gate Park’s Sharon Meadow. A beloved San Francisco tradition, the free annual concert features acclaimed artists from the Company’s Fall 2009 season and the San Francisco Opera Orchestra conducted by Maestro Luisotti.
I recall one super appeared in her brassy Brunnhilde costume with helmet, Viking horns and blond braids. Good year to bring the goddess to life along with Richard Wagner’s Die Walkure in June. It’s part two of the German’s Ring Cycle, designed to be performed in big festival venues. It’s Brunnhilde’s big number with her Valkyrie battle cry, the opera immortalized by Bugs Bunny playing Brunnhilde with her spear and magic helment; Elmer Fudd singing Kill da Wabbit. What’s Opera, Doc?
Nevertheless Siggy looks forward to Otello this season. He likes the ensemble chorus and the council chamber scene, the storm scene in Act I. Moreover his favorite composers tend to be the Italians, anybody whose name ends in “i” e.g. Verdi, Donizetti, Rossini, Puccini. He likes Turandot by Puccini. Simon Boccanegra too.
Siggy appeared in the Oscar winning documentary In the Shadow of the Stars many years ago.
Critics call it wonderfully funny and heart rendering. It's available at the San Francisco main library and ever so worth revisiting. What strikes me is the candid nature of the men who tell their story. They don't let pride stand in their way or get between them and their common love of music. No room for self pity. They make sacrifices, they do what needs to be done in real life, whether it's fighting your way out of a tenement or sleeping under a bridge. Siggy knows the score.
So. The film makers drove across country to New York with Siggy. Indeed it's been a long trip for him even though he's blessed. He took them back to the tough neighborhood he grew up in with just a single mom. Did he know in 1991 he would be with the opera over twenty years? He’s one of the most senior choristers along with those who the documentarians also featured, Fred Matthews and Tom Reed. Jim Meyer is another long time chorister and the manager.
Siggy is also good with numbers. He worked in a bank and has invested in real estate, namely New Orleans residential property. He showed me some Mardi Gras photos and a poster of a bottomless Salome in a café window in the French Quarter. The café is no longer there he says.
Closer to home, he has a condominium that’s for sale in San Francisco in the 600,000 range. I can say I lived in San Francisco, he says regretfully. He’s just moving to the East Bay though, Oakland, off Lake Merritt. Meanwhile the sun sets on his condo and I see the city lights and Bernal Heights from one of the decks. The whole place, it’s immaculate even for a bachelor pad. A show place. Siggy has been married twice, and made a widower once. No children.
His friends are his family. Particularly his childhood buddy Bruce and Miriam. Siggy just visited Bruce in New York before meeting up with me in San Francisco, although he says anybody he cares about he’s taken to New Orleans. Siggy and Bruce love baseball and movies. They saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which he loved. They saw The Wrestler, Revolution Road and Rachel’s Wedding. That one is depressing he says. Disturbing. Major mental illness, alcoholism, drug abuse.
Back at home Siggy hangs a print of Maria Callas in San Francisco in the living room, where the tenor treated me to an impromptu performance next to one of his pianos. Maria Callas, he would comment later, she died young and alone in Paris. She gained a lot of weight and food was her only comfort. Jacqueline Kennedy took Onassis. Did I remember that he asked?
Siggy is in his late fifties. He takes care of himself. Doesn’t drink coffee. He sipped green tea when he joined me at Peets near the opera house one overcast winter afternoon. Although he and I did walk over to Absinthe for some wine and a window table for two by the front door. The place was soon packed and animated on a drizzly Friday.
To be continued.
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