I sat with my hands neatly folded on my black silk lap. Boots tucked behind the carved legs of a velvet chair, hair swept in a bun, ruffles in repose at the neck and wrists of a sweater far too fancy to be functional in any other setting. I sat as lovely and composed as a woman might have sat a hundred years before, watching and listening to the same program, placed modestly behind her husband, peering around his head in the dark. Then my chin hit my chest – drift, nod, jerk, drift – I concealed the face of my watch with a cupped hand and pressed the indiglo button to check the time. Two hours, another three to go.

I was at an opera about love and for love. 

The opera was Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, based on one of the greatest and oldest of all legends of love. I came well acquainted with the original story, which was helpful, since I dozed through most of the subtitles, glancing up periodically to see the billowing blond hair and dashing sword in the exact same tableau stance they had been when my head drooped. There are many versions dating back before King Arthur, each more convoluted than the one before. Wagner actually simplified the details, though his adaptation still contains the one plot point that has always fascinated me. The opera begins with several arias of back story: land, kings, battles, death, betrothals, mortal wounds, healing, magic and a busybody handmaiden who means well. The consequence of all these complications, revealed in prologue memories, is Isolde’s fervent hatred of Tristan and Tristan’s aloof disregard of Isolde. Isolde decides to kill Tristan by giving him poison to drink. Her plan is actually to kill them both, first offering the drink to Tristan and then saving the last mouthful for herself. Her maid tries to save her life by switching the poison for a love potion. Tristan and Isolde drink the love potion instead of the poison and embrace with instantaneous and profound rapture, setting into motion the next two acts.

There are hints early on that Tristan and Isolde may already be in love and merely resisting because of a Capulet and Montague-type conflict due to territory and family. Isolde in particular had a chance to kill Tristan long before the poison and relented at the last minute, saving his life instead. Both proclaim how much they despise the other a bit too emphatically. Perhaps the love potion simply removes their inhibitions, unveiling their epic passion. But what if they were not in love before? What if they really did resent and hate each other and the love potion was nothing more than a spell, casting them into a compulsive affair as doomed pawns of fate. Does this remain a story about true love? I have always considered falling in love a dance that undulates between irrationality and rationality; overcome by the desire to be with someone yet having the choice to participate. If a lover has no control over whom or when they love, it feels more a pathology than an emotion.

I was at an opera about love and for love.

The drama at our house the morning of the opera rivaled the opening narrative of Tristan and Isolde. I had never intended on going to the performance that day. I have been a self declared opera Philistine for most of my life. Sadly, the cultural excursions of my youth resulted, not in Julia Roberts’ exultant tears of discovery in Pretty Woman, but in a resolute shrug that not everyone can appreciate all art and it was fine if I did not experience transcendence through overwrought vocals. So when he was given two very expensive box seats to Tristan and Isolde, my husband assumed he would take my classically inclined son rather than his acoustically inclined wife. I planned for a day on my own. I lined up books, sewing projects, cross-word puzzles, a million little quiet time amusements that would have made me very happy. Then, unexpectedly, the plot twisted as an adolecent voice rose above all others in protest. The orchestra swelled in jolts of discordant violins, smashes of percussion, deep rumbling undertones of bass and my husband was without a date.      

In retrospect, I had several options. I could have forced my son to go in spite of his mix of valid and absurd arguments. I could have refused to go and let my husband decide if he wanted to go alone or not at all since the tickets were free. We could have tried to call someone else to go with him.  I could have gone and been very crabby. I could have gone and been a fairly good sport, wearing a nice outfit and chatting about the highlights during intermission with some intelligence as if I had not slept through most of it.

The latter is, more or less, what happened. What was interesting is that I did not consider, or even imagine, any of these other options in the moment. As if drugged by a potion, or reacting according to reflex, or perhaps with the resignation of twenty-odd years of marital compromise, I, without question, got dressed. I could say I was going through the motions of rote obligation, yet as I watched my husband surreptitiously wipe his eyes during Isolde’s last aria, I felt a rush of what felt strangely like . . . love.

In some ways I was a pawn of fate, manipulated by a demanding teenager and an insistent spouse. But I was also intently aware of my own motivation. I did not expect a sudden conversion to operatic performance. I did not allow myself to wallow in self-righteousness, having sacrificed a precious day at home. I did not assume I was making a grand parental statement, standing tall and shrill in front of the painted scenery of “How Adults Should Act.” In the end, as I stared at the shape of my husband’s head, a black silhouette with glowing edges against the colorful set, it was enough to be there with him, for him, and the choice I made was so long ago, it seemed like no choice at all, today.