It was t-30 minutes until our show began and the mass of St. Olaf students rained down upon Bullfrog Bagels like a swarm of locusts. They weren’t ready for us but the staff was quick, agile, and provided excellent customer service. Contented with our bagel sandwiches, a number of us munched and chatted about how delicious the food was. Unbeknownst to the tunnel vision caused by our rumbly tummies, a pair of older gentleman sat at the table next to us– also enjoying their bagel sandwiches. The younger of the two asked us if we were part of a group and we proudly said something along the lines of, “We are taking a month-long class in DC to study the intersection of the arts and democracy and we are from St. Olaf College in Minnesota!”
The two of them had both heard of the school and commented on how we are known for our excellent music program. I engaged them in our world-famous Christmas Festival which airs on PBS every so often. The younger of the two gestures to his friend and informs us that he was a musician. The older man, who later told us his name was Rainer, began to tell us the tale of his life as an opera singer. Rainer/Rayner told us he had been in a film production of Verdi’s Falstaff to which we could relate as we had just seen the Merry Wives of Windsor as the Folger just a few days prior. On top of that, he said he had also been in the film version of Kafka’s The Trial. The younger gentleman (whose name I didn’t catch) was unaware that his friend had been in so many films and was surprised by Rainer’s comment about having an IMDb page.
Rainer isn’t from DC but is from the East Coast (Boston if I’m remembering correctly) but lived in Germany for a number of years. He was a professor of music at the University of Munich. Time was running low by this point and the show at Atlas Performing Arts Center was going to start soon but we found that we were both going to see the show! As Rainer and his friend were preparing to depart the bagel shop, he gave us one little piece of life advice:
“Have fun, live life, and never stop looking for the truth.”
I had trouble finding his IMDb page and scoured the internet for the version of Falstaff and The Trial but couldn’t find him in the cast lists. He said he had multiple IMDb pages because his name was regularly misspelled. However, I have come to the conclusion that he may have been singing for the actors and his name was not listed. The search for the truth is unending.