By Bruce Ebert
Richmond, VA, October 11, 2015 – Sometimes the houseguest singing in the shower can be really, really good – someone you would pay to see.
Meredith Lustig in costume for “Orpheus in the Underworld”. Credit: Lucid Frame Productions for Virginia Opera.
Just ask Bob Seaton and Tom Pinion of Ghent Square. Or Jim Deming of Cromwell Place. Their homes are among about 10 that have been opened this season to the Virginia Opera for lodging out-of-town artists.
“It gets lonely in a hotel,” said soprano Meredith Lustig, who bunked down in the guest bedroom at Seaton and Pinion’s townhouse while in town for the season-opening production, “Orpheus in the Underworld.” She was Eurydice.
“Most of the time I don’t get to stay in such a nice room,” said tenor Daniel Curran, who was Deming’s guest while playing Pluto in “Orpheus.”
The homeowners who open their residences to Virginia Opera, called “housers,” view this as a way to support the arts. And there are perks: complimentary tickets and invitations to be part of the opera company’s social whirl of parties and opening-night festivities. It also gives the housers an excuse to throw a party of their own – with a talented visitor as guest of honor.
“It adds a little spice” to life, Deming said.
Sometimes “spice” is an understatement.
Pinion and Seaton will not forget Wojciech Bukalski, a husky, Polish-born bass-baritone who arrived at the house laden with suitcases – a few of them packed with nothing but bottles of vodka and jars of borscht. The hosts didn’t care much for the borscht but they loved the vodka – and so, they said, did Bukalski. Cocktails flowed whenever the three were together.
Later, when Pinion and Seaton embarked on a cruise from New York, the singer returned their hospitality and gave them a place to stay in the city before they departed.
Deming tells of a South Korean performer who functioned well publicly onstage but was withdrawn in the privacy of Deming’s house. He was so shy, Deming said, he seemed to avoid his host. Days would go by when there would be no sign of him having come or gone.
“Then one day,” Deming recalled, “I saw him leaving through a sliding picture-window of the house! He said he didn’t want to intrude.”
Deming and Curran together had a moment made for a sitcom when Curran was poking around for a can of ginger ale late one night while Deming was asleep. Awakened by the unexpected noise and afraid it might be a burglar, Deming rushed downstairs with his flashlight. The two had a startled moment before recognition.
Curran recalled that while touring the house of elderly hosts in Utah several years ago, he got a glimpse of someone else’s fascinating life. The gentleman was a retired dentist whose patients had included Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable and Howard Hughes. (He had autographed photos as souvenirs.) And before becoming a dentist he was aviation pioneer Chuck Yeager’s co-pilot when Yeager broke the sound barrier, Curran said.
Since there are no payments made to the hosts, the housing program saves the nonprofit Virginia Opera significant money – an estimated $200,000 per season in room and board, said Vanya Foote, who directs the operation.
Tenor Daniel Curran, left, and his host, Jim Deming sit with coffee and catch up on the previous week at Café Stella on Colonial Avenue. Bruce Ebert
Even though it’s for just a few weeks, living in the community offers artists the chance to get a feel for the locale and its people, and learn from insiders not only where to wind down or crank up after rehearsals, but where to shop for groceries and other necessities.
Terms of the housing relationship allow the guest private sleeping quarters and use of a bathroom, laundry room, kitchen and living room.
“We respect each other’s space,” Seaton said.
Households that want to offer space in their homes to artists are interviewed by Foote to make sure they know what they’re getting into. Most of this season’s housers are in Norfolk, within walking distance or an easy drive of the Harrison Opera House, though Foote said distance is less of a factor as long as the drive isn’t too long and confusing, and as long as everything else measures up.
Does the house look and feel roomy or cozy enough, and will it reflect well on Virginia Opera? If there are pets, would that create a problem for the artist? Will a female artist in town alone feel comfortable in the home of two gay men? If a house has children, will that be a positive or negative factor? Does the house have Internet connections? These are just some of the questions Foote and prospective hosts consider.
There have been mistakes. Foote remembers an artist who thought she was fine around cats – until she had to live with one and a previously unknown allergy surfaced.
The solution was moving her to a hotel, Foote said.
Bruce Ebert, ebert.bruce@gmail.com