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It is very possible that for me, as an occasional performer on the stage, Aïda is what the "Scottish Play" of Shakespeare is, according to stage legend and superstition, for other performers: bad luck. Not once, but three times, I have seen disaster up close when I've been in a production of Aïda. Two of those times were not my fault. The third one was, and maybe I'll tell about those other two sometime.

Let's start with the first one. In 1989 I was playing in the PSU Brass Ensemble. I was, so to speak, the faculty mascot: tolerated as an OK player, and sometimes appreciated for the jokes. When Portland Opera was staging Aïda, we were invited to serve as the banda, the offstage fanfare brass group. I think they paid each of us $75, total, for four performances. The pay would be minimal, but I knew the experience would be priceless. I was not disappointed. But I had not reckoned on serious personal danger.

Our big scenes were to be the "Guerra!" one near at the start, where the Egyptians decide on war with the Ethiopians, and then the famous "Triumphal March", when the Egyptians return victorious. By 1989 no self-respecting production of Aïda could fail to include a live elephant. So we had one, rented from, I think, from Wildlife Safari down near Eugene. She was housed in a semi trailer outside the backstage entrance to Keller.

The banda, the rest of the cast, the stage hands, the various props, and the elephant had to share the backstage area. That's not much space, even without an elephant. Then, of course, people and things and the elephant had to go on-stage and come back off-stage, and the banda had to play off-stage, in an undisturbed space but nevertheless not obstructing all the rest of the production. I think there were maybe twelve of us, and our horns and stands and music. It was tight, and when we weren't playing we had to get out of the way, or even just leave the back-stage and disappear (more about that in another anecdote about another near-disaster).

The elephant was decked out in warlike harness, armor, howdah, and such, accompanied by her familiar Wildlife Safari trainers, though they were dressed as ancient Egyptians. She would have to move from her semi-truck onto a ramp, then enter the backstage on the north side of the Keller, cross the entire backstage, turn right (downstage), then go on-stage from the south side of Keller, while threading her way through a pretty narrow space with people in it, and movement going on, and TV monitors showing the conductor giving the beat, and glaring stage lights, and smells, and loud music, and an audience getting rather audible with its exclamations. It was at least as tough on the elephant to do that, in that tight space, with that complicated armor on her, as it was for two of our fellow brass players, from the Portland Opera orchestra, who were under a similar strain, for quite opposite reasons. They were out there way at the front of the stage, on platforms beyond the pit, all alone, completely exposed, playing the fanfare on their Aïda trumpets and wearing little more than loincloths.

We got through most of it OK, up to where the elephant needed to create the ooh-aah! highpoint of the Triumphal March by marching, slowly and majestically, across the stage, and downstage of everyone else. (So everyone else on the stage was upstage of the elephant, but not to worry: There is absolutely no way to upstage an elephant.)

When that began, I was offstage right, holding my horn at my side after the banda had played its bit to suggest an army approaching earlier from a distance. I could see it all as the elephant took the turn from offstage left and proceeded onstage. As she did that, it happened. She caught some of her trappings on a light tower and came onstage much earlier and faster than was the plan. She swerved toward the orchestra pit, using up a good portion of her allotted ten or fifteen feet of stage depth. There was ample reason to fear that the trumpets in the pit would soon be playing flatter than any other trumpet section has ever played. But then she corrected her course and trotted off the stage into the wings, right past me, and way ahead of the tempo. I got out of the way pretty quickly, though I don't think she even saw me. But Shakespeare's stage direction, "Exit, pursued by a bear," comes to mind. I think I recall seeing the keepers get her back under control and down the backstage ramp and into the semi trailer.

During the intermission all the conductor could say as he paced bug-eyed about backstage was, over and over, "Did you see that fuckin' elephant? I've never been so scared in my fuckin' life!"