It might be a good idea to steer clear of the living room for a while, because the old man’s overconfidence just cost him dearly: Dad just lost $25,000 betting on the opera.
Jesus, he really took a bath on this one.
Dad’s always tried to broaden our cultural horizons by taking us to the opera, and until today, we’d say it’s largely been a positive experience. Last year’s production of Die Zauberflöte was downright breathtaking. But for some reason, Dad got it in his head that putting a little skin in the game could make the opera even more exciting, so he went and put a $25,000 bet on the Lyric’s staging of Orfeo ed Euridice to “liven things up a bit.” We tried telling him that this sounded like a bad idea, especially given how tight money’s been lately, but he just insisted that Gluck was his lucky composer and pointed out that you can’t spell Gluck without luck like that was supposed to be a genuinely convincing argument.
Dad spent the whole drive over bragging about how Eurydice being banished back to the underworld at the end of the opera was “essentially a lock,” and how he almost felt bad for his bookie for letting him take 10:1 odds on it. He kept going on about how Orpheus was a born choke artist, jeering that he stood a better chance of drowning all of Hades in his own flop sweat than he did of making it to the surface without looking back at his beloved. Then during the performance, Dad even suggested heading out after the big “Che farò senza Euridice” aria so we could beat traffic because that was game over as far as he was concerned.
Well, all that cockiness sure wore off fast the second Amore came back onstage to prevent Orpheus’s suicide and reward him for his long-suffering fidelity. We’re pretty sure Dad actually stopped breathing for the whole recitative. When Eurydice finally came back to life and embraced Orpheus in sweet reunion, Dad gasped “no fucking way” so loud that even people in the balcony shushed him. The poor bastard just sat there with his head in his hands for the rest of the ensuing four-movement ballet with the rejoicing shepherds and shepherdesses.
The man has got to be in a pretty dark place after losing that kind of scratch.
We’re not saying that one bad opera bet suddenly means you have a problem, but knowing Dad, he’s probably already trying to figure out how to recoup his losses with a three-way parlay on the Lyric’s fall production of Tosca. Here’s hoping Dad can roll with the punches and call it quits now, because it’s not clear that he has the finances for another big loss at the opera house!
