Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll meet someone who dresses in character at the Metropolitan Opera — except that he’s not on the stage, he’s in the audience.
Gary O’Connor goes all in when he goes to the opera: He “often” dresses as a character in the production on the bill, or as something related to it. Yes, he once wore a handle-themed outfit to an opera by George Frederick Handel.
My colleague Sarah Bahr caught up with him at the Metropolitan Opera, when his outfit gave him a familiar, dignified, even gaunt look. Here’s what she discovered.
Before heading to the Met last Saturday, Gary O’Connor reached for a top hat, an overcoat and a lantern rather than a suit and tie. He looked in the mirror.
The 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, stared back at him.
“It’s the first time I’ve grown a beard, or tried to, anyway — a fake one would look terrible,” said O’Connor, 61, who put on the costume for the Met’s world premiere production of Missy Mazzoli’s “Lincoln in the Bardo.”
Since 2016, O’Connor, a lawyer who lives in Silver Spring, Md., has been dressing up as various characters and attending operas around the country. Over the past decade, he has attended dozens of productions in seven states and Washington, D.C., dressed in a Tristan-themed headpiece for Richard Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” the Swan Guy from Wagner’s “Lohengrin” and a Puritan for Vincenzo Bellini’s “I Puritani.”
“I think a lot of people view opera as sedate and edifying, when it’s actually something you should get very excited about,” said O’Connor, who spends weeks — even months — planning his looks, which combine elements assembled from thrift stores, costume shops, hardware stores, eBay and Amazon, along with the occasional commission from a milliner in Chicago.
The first opera he dressed up for was a production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle opera “Das Rheingold” at the Kennedy Center in Washington in 2016. He and his twin brother wore matching “RheinGOLD” yellow ties and handed out Golden Delicious apples, a nod to the fruit that gives the opera’s gods eternal youth and immortality.
The outfits “don’t necessarily take a whole lot of time,” he said. “It’s more the multistep process of bringing things together from various sources.”
For his Lincoln look, O’Connor, who is 6 feet 2 inches tall, bought an inexpensive jacket from a costume shop. He picked up the hat from a hat shop in Annapolis, Md., ordered the lantern from Amazon and grew the beard himself. “I’m also having it colored so it’ll look less gray,” he said.
His most ambitious costume, he said, was a look he dreamed up for a 2024 production of “Tosca” at the Met that starred his favorite singer, the soprano Lise Davidsen: A miniature version of the Roman castle where the opera’s final act takes place.
He added a leather strap to a 1930s-style cigarette tray and then mounted a little statue of St. Michael, which he painted to look like weathered bronze. He capped it all off with a Barbie doll that served as Tosca, coloring her blond hair black with a Sharpie to match what the libretto called for.
“I was so proud of all the detail I put in it,” he said. “It was definitely the most D.I.Y. of my costumes.”
O’Connor is not your typical born-and-bred New York City opera fan. He grew up in a house trailer on a dirt road in rural Oklahoma. His father, an airplane mechanic as well as a private pilot, wanted to have his own airstrip and hangars.
O’Connor didn’t attend his first opera until he was in his 30s.
In the last 30 years, he has seen more than 150, in 11 countries. His favorite is Claudio Monteverdi’s “L’Orfeo.” And in 2016, he served as a supernumerary — essentially an extra who does not sing — alongside the Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a noted opera lover, at the Kennedy Center.
“We had very strict directions: Do not talk to her,” said O’Connor, who got the gig, as a soldier in “The Daughter of the Regiment,” after searching online for “how to serve as a supernumerary.” “Do not go up to her. Do not ask for a picture. We couldn’t even put our fingers on the trigger of the fake guns we were holding because of the security concerns.”
Weather
A rainy day is ahead with a high near 60. Rain is expected to continue tonight, and temperatures will drop around 44.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Nov. 26 (Thanksgiving Day).
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Twenty-six years after a chance seating assignment, Mike Bloomberg and Diana Taylor have married,” according to a statement from a spokesman for the former mayor, 84, and Taylor, 71, who was known as the unofficial first lady of New York during his years at City Hall.
The latest Metro news
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Building collapse in Flatbush: The partial collapse of a three-story building left one dead and at least 10 injured. The search for trapped victims was continuing.
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The mayor’s first labor negotiation: Mayor Zohran Mamdani is expected to begin contract talks with District Council 37, the city’s largest municipal union, whose leader is seeking worker protections against artificial intelligence. The talks will test Mamdani’s commitment to a labor movement he has readily embraced.
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Arrest in the murder of a Bronx student: A 17-year-old was arrested and charged with the murder of Javits Frimpong, 15, who was fatally shot last month while walking to school in the Bronx. It was not yet clear whether the two boys knew each other.
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The ongoing measles outbreak: The highly contagious virus has swept through the Amish community in Lewis County, N.Y., and does not appear to be subsiding. Many suffered, and a 7-month-old boy died. It was the first death from the disease in New York in 30 years. Public health experts fear there’s no end in sight.
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Habba Mildon faces disciplinary actions over settlement: The Office of Attorney Ethics in New Jersey recommended that Alina Habba Mildon, the former top federal prosecutor in the state, be disciplined for her role in settling a sexual harassment complaint brought years ago by a waitress at President Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J.
The forecast is beginning to sound a lot like …
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Hello, snow? A storm system could bring an early, wintry chill to parts of New York and even wet snow in some inland areas. But wintry precipitation is not in the forecast for the city, just light rain today and Friday.
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Holiday theater: Whether you are a New Yorker or a visitor in town for a few days, here is a guide to help you find the right show this holiday season.
They once defined New York
In the last few days The New York Times has published the obituaries of five people who, in different ways, once defined New York:
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Richard Aurelio, the political and public relations virtuoso who helped engineer John Lindsay’s re-election as mayor in 1969 and who, as president of Time Warner’s New York City Cable Group in the 1990s, started the all-news channel NY1 News, was 98.
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Gary Fisketjon, who edited Jay McInerney, Bret Easton Ellis, Cormac McCarthy and Donna Tartt, was 72. He had a reputation for working methodically and slowly, taking an hour to read just five pages of a manuscript — and covering each page with suggestions and potential cuts.
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Jonathan de Sola Mendes, the oldest person to complete the New York City Marathon, was 104. He was 96 when he crossed the finish line in 2016 and promptly sipped some Scotch. (He died on June 9 of last year; his death was not widely reported at the time.)
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Rita Paul, who nurtured a famed Greenwich Village Hotel that had Ernest Hemingway and P.G. Wodehouse as guests when it was gracious and Bob Dylan and Joan Baez when it was a fleabag, was 99. Born in Berlin, she fled the Nazis when she was 13.
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Stanley Zabar, who managed the books — and the cheese, coffee, whitefish and housewares — at his family’s storied market on the Upper West Side, was 94.
METROPOLITAN diary
Horseman, stop in
Dear Diary:
I’m a horseman by trade and used to show every November at Madison Square Garden when the National Horse Show was still held there. We would hang out at a bar called Charley O’s on West 33rd Street.
One summer, a friend and I had tickets for a Grateful Dead show at the Garden. We stopped at Charley O’s beforehand.
A familiar Irish bartender named Pat was working. He poured me a draft, put it in front of me and looked at his watch.
“You’re a mite early, aren’t you?” he said.
— Brian Lenehan
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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The post He Dressed Up for the Opera. As Abraham Lincoln. appeared first on New York Times.
