A Night At The Opera

Well.

I was simply dying for some Bel Canto.

So, we went to see The Lady Of The Lake.

Everything was going just beautifully, until we started noticing something peculiar about one of the tenors - Malcolm.

Groucho thought Malcolm sounded suspiciously mezzo-soprano.

I thought he sounded suspiciously:


Errol Flynn.




I began pointing.



And then laughing.



Well, soon Groucho was as caught up in the fits as I was and he began heckling:

"Two beers, bartender!"

I one upped him with:

"You sing like a GIRL!"


Then Barbara came down and joined in!


"Was that a high C, or Vitamin D?"

"Nice!"

I said, as I punched her in the upper arm.

(I'd had some champagne.)

Oh, it was hilarious!

You HAD to have been there.

Anyway.

Malcolm kept right on singing like a girl...and at a certain point Groucho snapped.

Like ---> SNAPPED.

All of a sudden, he just screamed out:

"You're willing to pay HIM a thousand dollars a night just for singing? Why, you can get a phonograph record of Minnie the Moocher for 75 cents. And for a buck and a quarter, you can get Minnie!!!!"

And with that, he was gone.

I gathered... to go get Minnie.

I talked to him a few days later. He had fallen asleep on the train, but got home eventually without further incident.

We didn't really miss him, once Phyllis came down to our box.


But.

That usher had finally had enough of us at a certain point, and we really had to settle down.


Man alive, I was still cracking up about MALCOLM in the cab on my way home.

I snorted, snickered, sputtered, and spit ----> all the way to Broome St.

"Just WHO exactly was that man who sang like such a beautiful woman? That MALCOLM?"


Oh! How the perplexity rolled around in my head!

If only Kitty Carlisle had been there with us on our big night out at the Opera...she would have surely set us straight.