Good morning, all! I have a short trek to Toyland and then a 3 hour rehearsal with the SINGING NUN band. For some reason I keep thinking today is Labor Day rather than 9/11, but perhaps it's my denial.
I flew to London early in Sept, 2001, my second first-class trip on British Airways that year, to record Victor Herbert's THE LADY OF THE SLIPPER as a part of the Packard Humanities Institute's American Musical Theatre Project, with the London Sinfonietta and a conductor whose ego was out of contol and whose whims refused to follow a daily schedule: as a result, on the morning of 9/11, George Dvorsky and Hugh Panaro, playing the Montgomery & Stone roles, had been waiting all morning around the studio at Henry Wood Hall.
After our lunch break, George and Hugh went to the manager's office to kill the time by watching television. This would have been around 1:30 PM, London time, which was around 8:30 AM EDT. I don't remember what we were recording at the time, but one of them came into the booth to announce that a plane had just hit the World Trade Center. I thought that perhaps a small plane had lost its bearings and crashed, but because the maestro had made the recordng studio so unpleaant and tense, I thought it would be fun to hang out with George and Hugh watching the reports on a New York event. I didn't know then that Myra, my best friend Matthew's ex-fiance from Boston, was one of the passengers.
I got to the office to learn that the plane hadn't been a small plane but a large aircraft and I sat spellbound watching the second plane hit and the fall of the two towers. It was like watching a sci fi movie and I had a hard time believing that I was watching events taking place in my hometown. I believe I stayed glued to the tv for several hours, at which point I ran to the phone and called my goddaughter's family; Ron was in California singing that weekend in a concert, Charlotte was at school but now trapped in the Bronx since all the bridges and tunnels leading to Manhattan were closed, and Dona said she was fine but not leaving the apartment.
Everyone in the studio - Donna Lynne Champlin, Rosemary Harris, Hugh and George, Jack Dabdoub, and the USA staff spent several hours wondering how friends we knew who worked at the Trade Center or in the vicinity might be, there was a lot of crying and a lot of anxiety about friends who were to fly to London on 9/11 for the project: tenor Jeffrey Lentz, my music prep colleague Curtis Moore, Betty Auman from the LoC.
Curtis had the worst of it: his 9:15 am British Airways flight hit the runway, sped up to fly, slowed down, turned around and went back to the terminal. It took him the rest of the day trying to get back to his apartment in the Village; a taxi from JFK finally left him in the Bronx, where he walked across the bridge with his luggage. His World Trade Center casualty was the ex-boyfriend of a friend, living near the Trade Center, who has not been found. We think he went out to check on the situation and the building fell on him.
A friend of mine and DR Ginny's worked in the building that collapsed later in the day around 4 PM. I had my brother call his mother to check on him. His management wisely evacuated after the first plane crash. I wish the other companies had followed that bit of wisdom.
Beyond all these concerns, the other worrying those of us stuck in London - my return flight was scheduled for Sept 22 - was how and when we might return to the States. We had no idea what would happen next, from war to more terror activities. Luckily we had work to do, a good group of people - except for the maestro and a recording producer whose hygiene suggested he bathed once a month if he really needed it - and a nice hotel on Oxford Street, where each of us retired every evening to follow the events on the news. Rosemary Harris, one of the great ladies, couldn't fly back to the States, so every day she would come to the studio and hang out with us, cheering the singers after a take and helping to lighten our spirits.
As well as a great London staff - from the Sinfonietta players and personnel to Alison Fox and the recording crew - we also had wonderful performers in London on the project - Rosemary Ashe, Kim Criswell, Simon Green - whose energy and sympathy who helped the time pass as pleasantly as possble. God bless them each and every one.
