Mel Broiles: I Love This Job

Mel Broiles was opera’s biggest fan. His enthusiasm was remarkable and was expressed in many different ways. Mel was the first person at the opera house in the morning before rehearsal and he was always the last musician to leave the pit after the evening’s opera performance. The MET was Mel’s second home. All the other musicians in the orchestra, are assigned one locker for their instruments and clothing. Mel probably had ten, containing a wide array of trumpets, mouthpieces, clothing, music, music paper of all kinds, calligraphy materials, photographs, drawings, hundreds of magazines,  and probably a bottle or two of schnapps stashed here and there. Most of the musicians in the MET orchestra are in a hurry to leave the pit after the curtain comes down, anxious to get home or to the pub after a three or four hour opera performance. Not Mel. After all the musicians had fled the pit, there stood Mel, all alone, yelling, “Bravo cast” up to the stage to all of the opera singers as they came out for their curtain calls. All the singers knew Mel and loved his enthusiastic outpourings of appreciation. He would continue his “bravos” until the applause finally finished and the house lights came on, usually 5-10 minutes after the end of the performance.

Once on an opera tour of Spain in the early 90s,  ( not a MET tour, but a tour which carried an orchestra with many MET players), Mel became a self-appointed promoter for the tour. A short distance outside Barcelona, in the town of Higueras,  Mel donned  the costume of a Mexican toreador. He then marched to the center of the town square, stood next to the poster advertising that night’s performance and began playing a spirited version of the famous pasodoble, España Cañi. A rather large crowd gathered which was finally dispersed by the puzzled and incredulous local constabulary. 

Mel’s exuberance was not confined to cheering for the singers after the performance. There were times during rehearsals and performances when Mel simply could not contain his enthusiasm. At a rehearsal of Gotterdammurung in the mid 70s, Mel had a memorable exchange with the legendary soprano, Birgit Nilsson, perhaps the most famous Brunhilde of all time. In Act 2, scene 4 of Gotterdammurung, the wedding scene, Brunhilde erupts in a rage because a drugged Siegfried, under the evil spell of the villainous Hagen,  has renounced his love for her, married Gutrune and placed the coveted ring on the finger of his newly betrothed.   At the height of Brunhilde’s rage, the music is  punctuated by trumpet iterations of Siegfried’s horn call,  a raging duet between soprano and 1st trumpet.  Nilsson and Broiles tore into the passage: Nilsson singing at full throttle, unleashing her legendary power as Mel pointed his bell high over the music stand, directly into the opera house and matched Nilsson’s powerful outbursts phrase for phrase. At the end of the passage, Mel, overcome by the excitement of his duet with Nilsson, rose to his feet, craned his head over the lip of the stage and yelled up loudly at her, “You win, baby!”  The conductor, Sixten Ehrling, a dour, serious Swede who wore the furrowed brow and pained expression of a reluctant teetotaler, did not know what to do.   After Mel’s ‘commentary’ on who got the better of this musical exchange, the music nearly came to a halt. The maestro looked over at Mel with a wide-eyed tormented ‘help me’ look on his face, not quite sure if he actually heard what he just heard, and probably wished he never quit drinking. Nilsson laughed and seemed very much to enjoy the moment. The orchestra was a bit surprised but thoroughly amused by the proceedings. They came to expect the unexpected from Mel and looked forward to these little respites from the rehearsal routine.  (Don’t we all)

At a television broadcast of Elektra in 1994, Mel was overcome by his love of the opera. Near the end of the opera, Orestes murders Aegistheus and his retinue of courtiers. The mayhem takes place backstage, behind the set, accompanied by torrents of blood curdling screams from the murdered, (courtesy of the professional screamers hired specifically for the occasion). Apparently inspired by the blood lust of the battle (in the pit and on the stage) Mel yelled out, loudly enough to be heard by members of the bass section clear across the pit, the conductor, James Levine, and probably the opera patrons in the first couple of rows, “GOD, I LOVE THIS JOB!”  Levine’s head snapped around toward Mel, a reflexive reaction to see what the hell was happening.  A split second later, after he concluded that no one’s life was in danger, nor was anyone rushing the podium brandishing a weapon, he exhaled and coolly conducted the piece to its conclusion.