As the curtain was about to be raised on Houston Grand Opera’s world premiere opera Intelligence, I was not in the best mood. The Astros, as I could only surmise from the bits of information gleaned from my phone, were poised to lose game five of the ALCS after Adolis Garcia hit a crushing three-run bomb against Justin Verlander in the sixth inning. Despite the opera that was about to begin in front of me, I was far more concerned with the libretto spilling out of my phone and the drama in Arlington 250 miles away.
I am not a big opera fan. If you asked me to name one, I might say Tommy, the Who’s iconic rock opera. My favorite diva of all time is probably Freddie Mercury. But, not only was HGO premiering a dynamic and powerful new production, my wife is their director of communications and this was, after all, opening night. As much as I wanted to be home staring at a TV screen, I found my eyes darting back and forth between the phone and the formal crowd inside the Wortham Theater lobby.
The first half of the game was spent getting dressed up and slogging downtown through traffic. I swiped between apps trying to catch as much of the game as I could without barfing from motion sickness in the back of our Uber.
As with Game 1 it was a pitchers duel through five innings, making the game zip along. I dared to hope I might get to experience the end of the game before the lights went out in the theater.
But, like all great tragedies, mine began en media res, right when Garcia’s homer sucked the life out of me. All five-and-a-half innings leading up to that moment felt like prologue, suddenly unimportant, as my shoulders slumped. I spied Alan Sellar, HGO’s skillful videographer and dedicated Astros fan roaming the crowd with his camera. I asked how he was. “Not good.”
Comfortably in our seats, I was still looking at my phone. The stream of texts and posts on X spelled out the high drama happening in real time. In this case, it was a near-brawl after Garcia was hit by a pitch. There was video of Dusty Baker, livid, throwing his cap and refusing to leave the dugout. “Puccini has nothing on Game 5 of the ALCS,” I thought to myself.
The pressure was mounting both on the field and in my seat where I knew the clock was ticking. Soon enough, I was going to have to go dark, silence my phone and wait for intermission to learn my and the Astros fate.
As is customary for the first performance of the opera’s season, the orchestra, conducted by a donor who won an auction (“Like the first pitch at a baseball game,” I eagerly said to my wife, desperately trying to connect the two in any way possible), played the national anthem. The lights were still up and my phone in my hand at my side. Halfway through Francis Scott Key’s composition, my Apple watch started buzzing on my wrist.
A quick glance at the MLB app: “Astros 5, Rangers 4.” I literally stood with my mouth open as some of the patrons around me struggled with Key’s formidable melody. Jose Altuve had just crushed a three-run homer to put the Astros ahead. My friends Frank and Eric were texting me with reckless abandon.
“ALTUVE! I just peed a little.”
“FUCK YES!”
It was at that point the lights went out and now I really had to put the device away. Knowing there was still half an inning left was excruciating, but I wanted to be present for what turned out to be a lovely opera, which is saying something coming from a neophyte like me.
About a third of the way through the first act, my watch again vibrated on my wrist. Not wanting to be rude and genuinely engrossed in the performance, I let it go. It went off again. Then again. By this point, I’m starting to panic, trying to pay attention to the stage while watching the closed captioning above it — even in English, opera singers can be tough to understand. A single word appeared on the screen: “Victorious!”
At that moment, I chose to look at the glowing white text on my watch. It was a message from my mom. “YAHOO! What a game!”
When intermission rolled around as the cheers died down and people began to mill about, the wise folks at HGO put the score on the closed captioning screen. The crowd roared again.
From that point on, the night was a happy blur. Intelligence was fabulous. My wife and our friends spent a wonderful evening catching up at a downtown bar. And I was aglow in the aftermath of one of the great wins in Astros history courtesy of perhaps their greatest player of all time.
And I didn’t see a second of it.
Saturday morning, I woke up and began to watch the DVR’ed recording of Game 5. For some reason, only the Spanish version was captured and there I was watching closed captioning again. I skipped ahead to Garcia’s home run, then the brawl and finally Altuve’s game winner, the announcers describing the Astros second baseman as “el pequeño gigante,” the little giant.
After a night at the opera, he felt to me like a legendary diva with yet another postseason aria sung to perfection. What began for me (and many Astros fans) as a tragedy ended in triumph.
Bravo, el pequeõ gigante, bravo!
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
