The first thing caught my view at the Rigoletto rehearsal at Opera San Jose: beard. Then followed waves of mustaches and those drooping bellies. I cannot recollect the number of my futile yet desperate attempts to hypnotize myself that opera chorus was never a harem of hairy men, but talented and young, and most importantly, beautiful female dominated facility, just like the ones that I saw in broad way theatres. Despite my most sincere five minute prayer of my life, when clock turned 7:00 pm and my phone alarmed for the rehearsal time, group of very old and hair-and-fat affluent men occupied the room. After spending several miserable minutes to calmly acquiesce to my tragic fate with these old folks for the next two months, sudden billow of chill engulfed me; within few seconds of prelude of the show, singers’ colossal aura, with a monstrous vigor that I have never encountered before, subdued the rehearsal. Each outburst of notes that chorus sang unleashed their beastliness veiled under their wearied faces: veteran, elite singing titans.
            Every member of the chorus, mostly in their mid-forties or sixties, had depth of careers and knowledge of those whom people call the opera maestro. No participant but me sweated reciting those 32 lines of sixteenth-note Italian verses at 132 beat counts, nor went off-beat the rest of three hours long and 264 pages of music. Heck, they dozed off and missed half the rehearsals and still executed better than a just-turned-eighteen kid who studied his part for twenty hours at home! Every error and screw-up someone made, he was destined to be flinched and humiliated by those silent smirks and fiery glares from the members. Who would have imagined a kid whom the director acclaimed to own “one-in-every-million” voice and possible “emergency cover” of major role, would be the champion of that shame. Despite the chorus’s annoyances with my amateurish mistakes, I remained one cocky and unabashed kid; after all, opera was already conscious of my high school status when it handed me the contract.  Under the sweet protection of my armors, “student” and the “learning experience,” I shrewdly avoided those bitter, noxious criticisms and shame that other gentlemen often accepted by gnashing their teeth in the corner.
             My discomfort, unlike others, stemmed from not personal conflicts, but rather the stupefying and baffling atmosphere of the Opera itself. Even my flexible and succumbing characteristics were useless against this comical, yet perturbing, amalgam of different musicians’ perfectionism and dissident characters. “Artists are the world’s most prideful, yet the most stubborn,” and Opera San Jose’s principle happened to be “Quality corresponds to the number of cusswords.” Three hours long dry-runs usually started and ended with the either conductor or director’s eloquent yet fabulous rhymes of F, S, and D words. No talents or voice could protect them from those keen eyes and ears of persnickety duo. Single nugatory mistake segued to sudden stalling of the rehearsal with curse words, then to onerous rerun of the show, a destined horror. Brad, the director, was notorious amongst all perfectionists there for his peculiar tendency to squelch F word and rip out his last few remnants of hair from already hair desolate head.
              Trouble came while rehearsing the vulgar scene where Rigoletto uses his jester pole as if his genitalia to poke female-supers’ bottoms; John, who acted Rigoletto, simply wished to poke until the dancers slipped to ground, whereas Brad promoted the possibly the most lewd view: violent drilling of both hip and the pole to push dancers away. Two bickered for thirty minutes on this insignificant, one of many mundane vulgar thirty-second scenes of the show. Rest of the crew, grown tired after three minutes of their prideful dispute, started either betting money, or evaluating the colorfulness of conversing cusses. Only few, like me, seemed to be in serious emotional conflict on whether to laugh or pity those poor female supers, whom two repeatedly pushed over or poked with the jester pole to prove their artistic superiority. Once the clock rang for ten o’clock, a sign for dismissal, all who remained were piteous victims of the debate with their costumes all blackened with dust. The rumors say that two came to consensus the following evening by combining both their ideas. 
              Ironically, despite their persnickety obsessions with details and malice towards my ineptitude, most men happened to have joined chorus for leisurely purposes. The $800 paycheck for eight-week long musical work was too insignificant, considering their long distance travel from all over the bay area for the majority of members. Some men’s stated reasons of travel was in search for ladies, possibly comely ones around their age: somewhat immature and yet understandable reason that contradicts their noble images at the rehearsal. Changes of their mood and attitude outside and inside the practice were very dramatic, as if they were multiple personality characters described in Strange Case of Dr. Jekill and Mr. Hyde, or Gollum from Lord of Rings saga; once the rehearsal ended, they either became my humanitarian mentor who understood this poor beaten-up soul’s onerous mission to satisfy his peer, or trekked the facility in a quest for females to flirt with.
             My eight weeks at Opera was exasperating because of stark disillusionment, rather than the effort and musicianship it required. I, not to mention my musicianship, was still “too immature,” to enter the holy realm of professionals; my discomforts with vulgar contents and its atmosphere accounted for my naïveté. Opera was not a noble entertainment; it was intended for general public: the commons and serfs. Its contents were to satiate the public imaginations of the luxurious and corrupted affairs of ruling classes. Opera, de facto, was one ingenious political parody that illustrated the abhorrent injustices and corruption the aristocracy and monarchism abetted. The show I participated, Rigoletto, was particularly more critical than other operas. Many shows’ vulgarity stemmed from vivid depiction of aristocrats’ carefree love affairs, whereas profanity in Rigoletto rooted on social injustices; it illustrates a mental depravity of the society’s most inferior, a hunchback clown, Rigoletto, who is too powerless to bring justice upon the Duke who abuses his authority to r**e Gilda, Rigoletto’s only daughter, to satiate inextinguishable sexual lusts.
             Eight week at the Opera means much more than my “first job.” My lessons there were much more valuable than the $800 check the Opera sent for my service. Daily observations of the casts guided and enlightened my way to become a better musician. Most important, however, was learning that the professionals are not some unreachable titans; they too were human. In their youth, the chorus and cast once considered Opera as aristocratic amusement, a very similar view as mine; we were all swindled victims of the prior-generation musicians’ pompous displays; thus, we all went through the similar bafflements at our first participation in the Opera. Professionals were no different from me and after all; even after years of their experience, they still complained about wearing thick layers of costumes and tedious makeups; some finally managed to adapt to singing vulgar contents in dynamically entertaining, upbeat melody the night before the first showcase; they too were infuriated by the great Verdi’s decision to write speedy Italian phrases without a single rest mark. It was my prejudice on professionals that impeded me from acknowledging that their perfectionism was their methods of maneuvering their inconveniences and anxieties. Now that I know the real Opera and “humanness” of the perfectionist musicians, I can perhaps relax and enjoy my time there, not stressed or flinched, if Opera San Jose decides to employ me for the next show.