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Someone once said buy viagra online uk. Whoever said it was wrong. One of the first things I did when I arrived in New York City on June 5, 1967 was to buy a ticket to see buy viagra online uk at the Metropolitan Opera. There was a summer season that year, billed as the Lincoln Center Festival and one of the highlights was Leontyne Price’s Amelia. It was close to the June 12th performance date and hard to get tickets, but since I only needed one I got lucky and scored a decent orchestra seat. I was looking forward to an exciting musical evening, and then there was the telephone call, one that was good, but inconvenient. A good friend from Washington who was even more attractive than Leontyne Price called and said she planned to be in New York on the same evening as the performance and strongly urged that we have one of our own. I wasn’t inclined to decline but I did say I’d try to get another ticket, but by then the performance was sold out. I now had a spare ticket and needed to find a home for it. My first call was to Marian McPartland, who had taken me on my first visit to the then almost brand new Lincoln Center a few months earlier to see her school chum, Margot Fonteyn. Marian had her own performance for the masked ball night, but said she knew someone who might want the ticket. The person was Mary Packard and Marian gave me a telephone number, which I called immediately. A woman answered the telephone, I used Marian’s name, told her I had a ticket I couldn’t use and the voice of the other end of the line was happy to take what I guess must have become a hot ticket off my hands. There was no time for mail and I was too green to think of a messenger. Mary should have, but didn’t. buy viagra online uk, she asked. I suggested she come to the lobby of the office building where the CIA offices were located and she thought that was just fine. An hour or so later I met Mary in the lobby. She was very nice, appeared to be in her late sixties and was pleased to have the ticket. She wanted to pay for it but I thought it was better that I just give it to her. This pleased her immensely, she thanked me and said she’d accept the ticket only if I agreed to accompany her to the opera at some date in the future. I said I’d be pleased to do so and promptly forgot about her offer. A few days later I put on my $100 tuxedo, headed north, presented myself at the box office, was handed a ticket, which I passed off to an usher without looking. The usher motioned me up the stairs and I wondered if I was headed towards a nosebleed. I looked at the ticket and it said Parterre, Box 29 (or maybe 28), Seat 2. I found the box, found my seat, sat down and waited. Mary and two very attractive young people arrived; it turned out they were a tenor and a soprano. Mary was somewhat better dressed that she’d been in the lobby of 210 East 42nd Street. Hello, how are you, this is so and so who are young vocalists still in training. Hope you enjoy the performance and so forth, which I did. How could one not? The wonderful new Marc Chagall sets and costumes, Jerome Hines, Lucia Popp as the Queen of the Night. It was a production that was lavish beyond words, which had been paid for by Mrs. John D. Rockefeller. No expense had been spared on the production or the cast. When the performance was over there was a limousine waiting for us and we were whished away to a penthouse nightspot overlooking Central Park. The young man and woman, who I never saw again, sang for an hour or so and sometime after midnight we went downstairs to go our separate ways, Mary and her friends departed by limousine and me via the subway. Of course, I made an excuse that I wanted to walk for a while; I didn’t want my elegant friends to know I was on an underground budget. Mary Packard was Mrs. John D. Rockefeller’s private secretary and had been forever. One of the things she said to me that night was, buy viagra online uk. We stayed in touch and in 1969 I did need to get in touch with Governor Rockefeller, hoping to encourage him to reach out to the dying pianist Bobby Henderson. I called Mary, Mary called Governor Rockefeller, sent him a tape and one of the last people Bobby heard from was Governor Rockefeller. |
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buy viagra online ukPosted in on July 19, 2010 by |
Metropolitan Opera Program, June 22, 1967 (cover and inside page)
